Explore Essays and memoir
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Miniature Twins
Omer Friedlander
‘We were so small, palm-sized, that our parents went to a doll shop in Jerusalem to find clothes that would fit us.’
Omer Friedlander writes about his twin.
The Survivals of Lafcadio Hearn
Kenny Fries
‘Did Hearn feel comfortable in Japan because being a foreigner overshadowed his physical difference?’
Switzerland Without an Army?
Max Frisch
‘Why should Switzerland of all places have no army? It costs billions and billions, but we can afford it.’
American Maniac
Rafael Frumkin
‘I would peel wrappers off sandwiches, remove noodles from their boxes, fry up meat before any authorities had the chance to track me and my bounty down.’
Feeling Bullish: On My Great-Uncle, Gay Matador and Friend of Hemingway
Rafael Frumkin
‘In his suit, with his pigtail and his montera, he was pure potential: he could be masculine vanquisher or gold-embroidered fairy. He was both, actually, at all times, and nobody who came to see him fight thought any less of him for it.’
The Abyss
Rafael Frumkin
‘I came home this past fall to the Chicago suburb where I’d lived with my parents from age nine until I left for college in 2008, and I moved back into my childhood bedroom.’
The Discovery of Mexico
Carlos Fuentes
‘I was born on 11 November 1928, under the sign I would have chosen, Scorpio, and on a date shared with Dostoevsky, Crommelynck and Vonnegut.’
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.’
Lost Cat
Mary Gaitskill
‘Which deaths are tragic and which are not? Who decides what is big and what is little?’
The Lapwing Act
Patrick Galbraith
‘We claimed the places that were theirs and they were forced to take refuge on what we left behind.’
An excerpt from In Search of One Last Song.
Raymond Carver, 1938 to 1988
Tess Gallagher
‘We were married in Reno, Nevada. It was a very Carveresque affair, held in the little Heart of Reno Chapel across from the courthouse. Afterwards we went gambling at Harrah's Club and with every turn of the wheel I won. I couldn't stop winning.’
Memory and Invention
Mavis Gallant
‘When I happened to be working all day, every day, on a story set in the Paris of 1953, I was stunned and bewildered to step outside and discover the shape of the cars, the casual clothing and clean facades of the 1990s.’
