Explore Essays and memoir
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New York City: Crash Course
Elizabeth Hardwick
‘A spectacular warehouse this city is; folk from anywhere.’
The Beauty of the Package
Pico Iyer
‘You can throw yourself into any fantasy, she (and her country) might have been saying, so long as you don’t mistake it for real life.’
August in my Father’s House
Michael Ignatieff
‘Dinner has been cleared away from the table under the mulberry tree, and she is sitting at the table with a wine glass in her hand watching the light dwindling away behind the purple leaves of the Japanese maple.’
The Blazing Light in August
Gabriel Gbadamosi
‘The basic social contract that I won’t break the law by being in a riot and that, in return, my society will keep me safe is being ripped apart in this confrontation with the hard reality of violence: we must break them or they will break us.’
Finished With Engines
Ian Jack
‘My father wrote a kind of autobiography in the years before he died.’
Where Does Writing Come From?
Richard Ford
‘Occasionally if pushed or annoyed I'll come right out and say it: I make these little buggers up, that's what. So sue me’.
Another Age
Helon Habila
‘This snapshot of us in the foyer of the MuSoN Hall has come to symbolize a lot of things to me. Our smiles seem to say that the worst for our country is over, we are gazing beyond the camera into a new and brighter future, where we could be poets without fear of arrest, murder or exile. We had cheques worth 50,000 naira and 20,000 naira in our pockets. But above all the picture is a confirmation of my deepest dream, that of becoming a writer.’
Nell Freudenberger | God and Me
Nell Freudenberger
‘When I was seven, I sat down to draw God. God wore a pirate shirt, purple harem pants and a red fez.’
The Silent Majority of Cape Town
William Finnegan
‘Next to Mandela sat Allan Boesak, the ANC candidate for premier of the Western Cape province. Great is thy faithfulness, indeed, I thought.’
Rats
Maarten ’t Hart
‘Only as I watched the little tugboat disappear towards IJmuiden, just west of Amsterdam, did I begin to have doubts about what had been proposed to me.’
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
David Gates
‘It took longer and longer for the next one to come, and then there wasn’t a next one.’
Dreams of Reason
Ruth Franklin
‘We know that nightmares are unreal, yet they torment us all the same.’
