Explore Essays and memoir
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A Journey into Afghanistan
Peregrine Hodson
‘We had been travelling for a week, and had reached the territory of the Hesb Nasr: a rival group of mujahedin who were notorious for ambushing travellers, stealing their weapons and skinning their victims.’
The Politics of Grief
V. V. Ganeshananthan
‘It is a way of humiliating people, to say that their dead are not dead, to say that people are not even allowed to mourn.’
The Fall of Saigon
James Fenton
‘I wanted to see a communist victory, which I presumed to be inevitable. I wanted to see the fall of a city.’
The Tin Drum In Retrospect
Günter Grass
‘With the baggage of stored-up material, vague plans and precise ambitions - I wanted to write my novel and Anna was looking for more rigorous ballet training - we left Berlin early in 1956 and, penniless but undaunted, went to Paris.’
House Style: Editing Brazil
Yuka Igarashi
‘We’re freaks . . . Why are we still talking about typos?’
Physics and Bonkology
Janice Galloway
‘Sex Education, like winning the pools, was something that did not happen to us.’
Foreigners
Daniel Gascón
‘It would’ve been a magical moment if my neighbours hadn’t started fucking at that very second.’
The Two Gardens
Lorna Gibb
‘There are two gardens in my memory. The first was hidden behind the rows of shabby council houses where I grew up.’
