Explore Essays and memoir
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Crocodiles and Fairy Dust
Janice Galloway
‘I admit the sneaking feeling, just now and then, that those who govern us think we’re the problem.’
The Price of Freedom, Including VAT
Xiaolu Guo
‘I had lost my native country, now I was going to lose a continent.’
Raqqa Road: A Syrian Escape
Claire Hajaj
‘The morning Helin walked out to die, she dressed carelessly in a loose T-shirt and jeans.’
Blue Hills and Chalk Bones
Sinéad Gleeson
‘One day, something changes; a corporeal blip. For me, it happened in the months after turning thirteen: the synovial fluid in my left hip began to evaporate like rain.’
On Shakespeare and the Quest for Belonging
Minal Hajratwala
‘We may not belong to Shakespeare, nor he to us, ever.’
The Mask of Night
Lorna Gibb
‘I puzzled over the language but disentangled its meaning slowly, carefully, eager to connect’ Lorna Gibb on Shakespeare’s Juliet.
To Thine Own Self Be True
David Flusfeder
‘If Shakespeare’s characters stand for anything, it’s for a slipperiness of identity.’ David Flusfeder on a dog named Shakespeare.
Ariel’s Song
Romesh Gunesekera
‘It is to Shakespeare’s pages I return whenever I feel I am sinking. There I can be sure to find a lifeline.’
Fugee
Hawa Jande Golakai
‘Now we’ve fizzled into a ridiculous unsaid, a flaccid tale of love, or lack thereof, in the time of Ebola.’
First Sentence: Eliza Griswold
Eliza Griswold
‘This, of course, was years before anyone knew or cared who Boko Haram was.’
