Explore essays and memoir
Where is Kigali?
Lindsey Hilsum
‘Evariste was the nightwatchman. He and I were alone in the house in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, when the killing started.’
Those Who Felt Differently
Ian Jack
‘Could grief for one woman have caused all this? We were told so.’
Self-Consciousness
Edward W. Said
‘It was through my mother that I grew more aware of my body as incredibly fraught and problematic.‘
Editing Vidia
Diana Athill
‘I thought so highly of Vidia’s writing and felt his presence on our list to be so important that I simply could not allow myself not to like him.’
Kiltykins
Ved Mehta
‘When I was seeing Kilty (how, even today, the word 'seeing' mesmerizes me), the fact of my blindness was never mentioned, referred to, or alluded to’.
The View from this End
Alexandra Fuller
‘It lay like a sodden comma, curled up against its mother, and no one realised it was dead.’
How to Write About Africa
Binyavanga Wainaina
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
Lost Cat
Mary Gaitskill
‘Which deaths are tragic and which are not? Who decides what is big and what is little?’
In Search of Beauty: Blackness as a Poem in Saudi Arabia
Sulaiman Addonia
Sulaiman Addonia on the slow process of rediscovering the beauty of black skin after moving to Saudi Arabia as a child.
Exhale
Beth Gardiner
‘After all my travels, I can see now what I couldn’t when I started. In the suffering pollution brings, there is also the glimmer of a different future, its outlines visible through the haze.’
How Do You Write a Memoir When You Can’t Remember?
Wendy Mitchell & Anna Wharton
Wendy Mitchell, who has been living with dementia since 2014, discusses the process of writing her memoir with her ghostwriter, Anna Wharton.
The Power of a Name
Rebecca Tamás
‘When English is the dominant everything, you can’t help wanting to fight for the little speck of the rest of your self.’
On Meeting Mrs Obama
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
‘Michelle’s story, while deeply rooted in the American story, speaks to experiences that are universal.’
Radicalisation in the Digital Age
Marc Weitzmann
Marc Weitzmann on how radicalisation happens in the digital age.
The Poem in the Pocket
Héctor Abad Faciolince
‘The note stated that it was by Borges, and I believed that, or at least I wanted to believe it.’
Ghostlands
Jennifer Kabat
Jennifer Kabat on the Anti-Rent War, one of the earliest moments of rural populism in the US, and something few know about outside the Catskill Mountains.
On High Heels and Lotus Feet
Summer Brennan
Summer Brennan on high heels, foot-binding, and our ongoing performances of gender.
A Night in the Engadine
John Kaag
John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche, camps out in the mountains of the Engadine where Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
10 Schools of Philosophy that should be better known (in the West)
Julian Baggini
The author of How The World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy explains ten of the most overlooked philosophies from around the world.
Martin Goodman | Notes on Craft
Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman on why it took him twenty years to write his latest novel, J SS Bach.
The Nine Circles
Margo Rejmer
‘The body wants to escape suffering at all costs. The body wants to live.’
Introduction
Devorah Baum & Josh Appignanesi
‘Troubling though they may be, feelings also tell us something about power and its limitations.’
Touch
Poppy Sebag-Montefiore
‘Touch had its own language, and the rules were the opposite of the ones I knew at home.’
Lazy Boy
Josh Cohen
‘I don’t see him staring back at me from the La-Z-Boy, I see me, I see a crystalline image of my own burned-out soul’
Politics in the Consulting Room
Adam Phillips & Devorah Baum
‘In politics people think they know what they want, and in psychoanalysis the assumption is that they don’t know.’ Adam Phillips in conversation with Devorah Baum.
Distilling Existence: A Study with Wilson Amunga
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor & Bernd Hartung
‘If the river makes a sound now, it is a drawn-out moan.’ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor on distilleries in Kenya, with photographs by Bernd Hartung.
The Guests
Hisham Matar
‘Strangely, it was Joseph Conrad who introduced me to Edward Said and not the other way around.’
