Explore Essays and memoir
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Death of the Author
Lorna Sage
‘Her genius for estrangement came out of a thin-skinned extremity of response to the circumstances of her life and to the signs of the times.’
An Afghanistan Picture Show
William T. Vollmann
‘The windbreakers of the passengers standing at the rail fluttered violently.’
Los Angeles
Richard Rayner
‘Los Angeles was a lot like South Africa. The apartheid wasn't enshrined by law, but by economics and geography, and it was just as powerful.’
My Mother’s Eyes
Todd McEwen
‘My mother has a small brown book, the kind of notebook made of alligators and sold to wealthy people who do not make notes.’
Teeth
Giorgio Pressburger
‘One day in January a tall thin man with long white hair came into our courtyard. He was draped in a green cloak, torn in various places.’
Wild Women, Wild Men
Hanif Kureishi
‘When I saw them waiting beside their car, I said, ‘You must be freezing.’ It was cold and foggy, the first night of winter, and the two women had matching short skirts and skimpy tops; their legs were bare.’
Red Fire Farm
Anchee Min
‘I arrived at Red Fire Farm – along with many other girls in ten large trucks – late one spring afternoon in 1974.’
The Internment
John Conroy
‘In a low-rent corner of Belfast's city centre is a district known as Smithfield, and on its main street there is a market, an anarchist bookshop, a public toilet and a bookmaker's called Stanley’s.’
The Dolphin of Amble
Peregrine Hodson
‘Once again the dolphin presented his body to my hand, slid by my fingers and turned over with a lazy splash.’
Anatomy of a Cheeseburger
Jeremy Rifkin
‘Ray Kroc, one of the founders of the McDonald's hamburger chain, changed American eating habits as effectively as Henry Ford changed the way Americans travel.’
