Explore Essays and memoir
Sort by:
Sort by:
Out of the Cradle
John Barth
‘What had formerly been a sedative, a tranquilizing soporific, had morphed into a facilitator of reflection, contemplation, deliberation, even inspiration.’
Prozac Culture
Brian Dillon
Brian Dillon on the Prozac craze of the 90s, and his experience taking the infamous antidepressant.
Rana Dasgupta | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Rana Dasgupta
‘This is a literature of checkpoints and fences, and the improvised gaps through which desperate people pass.’
Russia on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Liza Alexandrova-Zorina
‘The Russian people suffer from a victim complex: they believe that nothing depends on them, and by them nothing can be changed.’
Same-same but different | Discoveries
Ka Bradley
This week’s Discoveries features translation in all its many articulations.
Soon Comes Night
Ekow Eshun
‘I’d become so used to hiding away inside myself I couldn’t respond with any spontaneity. I was stuck in the shallows of my emotions.’
Tara Bergin | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Tara Bergin
‘If you laugh and tell me I am only speaking metaphorically, I will reply: what other way do you expect me to speak?’
The Back Way and the Way Back
Will Boast
Despite emerging from two decades of misrule under Yahya Jammeh, many Gambians still aspire to go ‘the back way’ into Europe.
The Canada Pictures
Douglas Coupland
‘In the year leading up to this I started collecting objects that, in some way, evoked a sense of Canadianness in me.’
The Comrades and I
Mona Abouissa
Mona Abouissa on her experiences with Egyptian communists, and the role they played in Egypt before 1952, when they were excised from official history.
Things I Didn’t Know
Wiam El-Tamami
‘When people would ask me what I was doing in Istanbul, I would explain that I’m a freelance writer and translator, and I move a lot. I move intuitively, I would say: places call to me.’
