Explore essays and memoir
Jailbait
Ottessa Moshfegh
‘Part of what made him interesting was that I felt he would dismiss me the moment I bored him.’
What Do Women Want?
Devorah Baum
‘What we’re arguing about turns out to be how to speak to each other at all.’
What Silence Knows
Anthony Shadid
‘Words can’t quite re-create the smell of war. I have found myself trying to wash it out of my hair, off my fingers. More than once, I have run water over the soles of my shoes.’
To Remember Is to Live Again
Buddhadeva Bose & Amit Chaudhuri
‘Never, long as I live, will I forget the few days I had spent with the Millers.’ Buddhadeva Bose on his friendship with Henry Miller.
Five are the fingers, and five are the sins
Rebecca Watson
Rebecca Watson on the life of the man who prototyped fascism, the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio
To the Castle and Back
Václav Havel
‘I am announcing that I have returned from the USA. I thank all of those who worked in the domestic resistance. Likewise I thank all of us who worked in the foreign resistance.’
Addressing Mental Health Through Reading Well
Debbie Hicks
‘Reading Well is more than just a booklist – it represents the power of reading to change lives.’
The Editor’s Chair: On Christine Montalbetti
Alex Andriesse
‘For Montalbetti to have achieved this syntactic ease in French is a feat. For the translator to reproduce it in English requires the capacities of a medium.’
The Munduruku People Against Brazil
Tiffany Higgins
‘The Middle Tapajós Munduruku are not alone. Indigenous and traditional communities throughout the Tapajós River basin are facing increased degradation of their environment and the cultural sustenance practices that form the foundation of their lifeways.’
since feeling is first
Nuar Alsadir
‘The way we manage erotic knowledge is connected to our handling of unwanted truths’
Heart Berries
Terese Marie Mailhot
‘We started the affair in a small booth at Village Inn. I didn’t sleep the night before. You were my teacher, and we discussed my fiction.’
Cormac James | Notes on Craft
Cormac James
‘My most recent writing lesson came from Elizabeth Strout, a few months ago. Pay attention, is all she taught me, and it was plenty.’
Court
Blake Morrison
‘One by one they’re led into the box. They swear their oath. They confirm their name, their employment, why they were where they say they were, what it was they saw.’
Africa Writes
Caitlin Pearson
The Royal African Society takes a look back at the history of the Africa Writes festival, their annual celebration of contemporary literature from Africa and the diaspora.
Ways of Looking
Lulah Ellender
‘He is like a mantling hawk, his heft and body spreading over his prey as he tears off pieces of her with his eyes.’ Lulah Ellender on the male gaze.
The Man Who Lived
Snigdha Poonam
Snigdha Poonam on how WhatsApp is being used to encourage mob violence in India.
Louise Bourgeois as I Knew Her
Jean Frémon
‘The portrait is built up of tiny strokes, one added upon another, like dashes of pencil.’ Translated from the French by Cole Swensen.
Four Syrian Borders: A Motorcycle Journey, 2007
Esa Aldegheri & Gavin Francis
‘The landscape, glimpsed through plumes of dust thrown up by trucks, grew drier, more hostile as it climbed away from the sea.’
Mother’s Death
Stephen Sharp
‘Last year father attacked me as a “wet radish”. This caused me to give up writing diary entries.’
Palmyra
Charles Glass & Don McCullin
‘ISIS’s second conquest of Palmyra astonished everyone, and fed the belief in a Syrian government conspiracy to assist ISIS.’
New Town Blues
Jason Cowley & Gus Palmer
‘They had believed they were coming to a new town. But, they said, Harlow wasn’t new: it looked old.’
Renderings
Edward Burtynsky & Anthony Doerr
‘Often when I stare into the alien circuitry of a Burtynsky picture, it takes me a while to figure out what has actually been photographed.’ Anthony Doerr introduces Edward Burtynsky’s photographs.
The Last Shopkeepers of London
David Flusfeder
‘It became a kind of mission to find contemporaries of theirs that weren’t closing down, establishments that have continued to flourish, or at least endure.’
Root and Branch
Sana Valiulina
‘I am my father’s daughter, a former prisoner of war and “suspicious person” who spent ten years in the Gulag.’ Translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon.
Karl Kraus and Veza
Elias Canetti
‘It was natural that the rumors about both these people should reach me at the same time; they came from the same source, from which everything new for me came at that time.’
Jacques Testard | The Editor’s Chair
Jacques Testard
‘It is clear when reading Svetlana Alexievich that she has a deep empathy for the characters whose stories she tells.’
Carys Davies | Notes on Craft
Carys Davies
‘All good stories are both resonant and concrete; they live in the mind of the reader and reverberate beyond the pages of the book.’
The Leech Barometer
Rebecca Giggs
‘To be consumed by leeches is to be vital, to be animate, though it is also to be reminded you are something else’s prey, and therefore porous and mortal.’
Terminus
Pedro Rosa Mendes
‘We hope that the copilot knows the terrain well. That his mask of youth conceals the face of a seasoned veteran of war. That he knows the minefields because he helped plant them.’
