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Olivia Laing | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Olivia Laing

‘Which bodies can go where might be the central question of our century.’

Past Perfect

Jason Larkin

‘Museums are not solely concerned with objects and our collective past, but also with ideas; notions of what the world is, or should be.’

Three Friends in a Hammock

April Ayers Lawson

‘I could not decide if love was real as a thing or something that could never entirely be proven, like God’

The Alarming Palsy of James Orr

Tom Lee

‘As it was, this gave the impression of two different faces, two different people, welded savagely together.’

Blue Self-Portrait

Noémi Lefebvre

‘One piece of luck: I didn’t explain to the pianist how to play the piano.’ Translated from the French by Sophie Lewis.

Three Poems

Sylvia Legris

‘By the dog the minced oaths, / the god-wounds, the solemnly / declared chronical maladies.’

Bright Circle

Ben Lerner

‘Things he dreamt began to show up in the bushes, the plastic figurine from a parachute firework, the small dull rusted circular saw blade he thought of as a throwing star, and he pocketed those things.’

The Initials

Alex Leslie

‘There was no inquiry and no report either because we all have new names now.’

Roma

Deborah Levy

‘Her husband who is going to betray her is standing inside the city of Roma.’ Dreams of infidelity from Deborah Levy.

Yet Trouble Came

Phillip Lewis

Phillip Lewis on writing emotional autobiography. ‘A sincere observation followed by a sincere utterance is the most powerful and effective form of communication.’

Naugahyde

Gordon Lish

A story of ageing infidelity: ‘He would seek to remember and she would seek to remember – each succeeding a little differently from the other.’

Books Do Furnish a Room

Penelope Lively

‘The shelves say something about the person who has stocked them; they say much.’

Chanel Nº 5

Victor Lodato

‘The liquid tingled, a subtle electrification, as the scent changed, bloomed, became an extension of the boy himself.’

Threshold | State of Mind

Barry Lopez

‘What we’re about to see is greater than the thing you’re running from.’