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Christmas Eve in Uganda

Ryszard Kapuściński

‘In fact, from the moment I spotted Amin, I made a point of neither accelerating nor slowing down – no turning or stopping.’

Polisario

Jeremy Harding

‘The wall began to look impressive, but its lethargy, the lack of activity anywhere along it, was exasperating.’

The Road to Abyei

John Ryle

‘Bor is a long way from Khartoum – more than 700 miles. There were other hostile groups on the way and precious little food.’

The Bey

Bruce Chatwin

‘“Ha!” said the old gentleman. “I see you have The Eye. I too have The Eye. We shall be friends.”’

Mrs Mandelstam

Bruce Chatwin

‘The doctor, I assume, was her KGB man.’

Konstantin Melnikov: Architect

Bruce Chatwin

‘The death-knell of visionary architecture in Russia had already been sounded when Lenin's commissioner for enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, announced, “The people also have a right to colonnades.”’

The Old Silk Route

Colin Thubron

‘If I had charted the most landlocked spot on earth, the arms of my compass would have intersected here, in China's far northwest.’

Siam

Norman Lewis

‘Little surprise was aroused when the model chosen for the new Hat Yai was Dodge City of the 1860s as revealed by the movies.’

Taiwan

Ian Buruma

‘It is extremely expensive and almost entirely symbolic, for the struggle itself is symbolic, waged mostly by the Political Warfare Department.’

Saigon Dreaming

Tela Zasloff

‘In the summer of 1964, when we arrived in Saigon, our house belonged to the United States military, whose cheerful Vietnamese employees moved us in.’

More Fat Girls in Des Moines

Bill Bryson

‘I didn't really expect my grandparents to be waiting for me at the gate, on account of them both having been dead for many years.’

Four Corners

Amitav Ghosh

‘Never had a wilderness seemed so utterly vanquished.’

Warsaw Notebook

Timothy Garton Ash

‘Underground groups are called ‘structures’. Some people offer friends the service of their ‘structures’. This makes them important. Then it turns out the structures don't exist.’

The Extravagance of the Italians

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

‘There are no Italians in Italy, only natives and newcomers.’ Hans Magnus Enzensberger on the small-change crisis in 1970s Italy. Translated by Martin Chalmers.