Explore Essays and memoir
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The Conflicted Legacy of Meles Zenawi
Maaza Mengiste
‘Meles Zenawi’s legacy is as complicated as the life he chose to live, under a name (Meles) that he took from a fallen comrade during his days as a guerrilla fighter. ’
Maud Newton | Portrait of My Father
Maud Newton
‘Exactly how long the prostitute, unbeknownst to my father, stayed at our house and slept in my bed is hard to gauge.’
Chromium
Primo Levi
‘Life is full of customs whose roots can no longer be traced ... but in any event, why were pig's feet obligatory with lentils, and cheese on macaroni?’
My Father’s Life
Leonard Michaels
‘Six days a week he rose early, dressed, ate breakfast alone, put on his hat, and walked to his barbershop at 207 Henry Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, about half a mile from our apartment.’
Essex
Norman Lewis
‘Essex is the ugliest county. I only went there to be able to work in peace and quiet and get away from the settlers from London south of the river.’
The Lord in his Wisdom
Jackie Kay
‘I realize with a fresh horror that Jonathan is seeing me as the sin’
Watching the Rain in Galicia
Gabriel García Márquez
‘Only then did I understand where my grandmother had got that credulity which allowed her to live in a supernatural world in which everything was possible and where rational explanations were totally lacking in validity.’
The Writing of ‘Or Shall We Die?’
Ian McEwan
‘There was too the challenge, as I saw it, of writing a singable English, simple and clear, that could express public themes without pomposity and private feelings without bathos.’
Murderer in the Family (Part Two)
Rian Malan
‘It's not just their skins that are white; their minds are white, too. They are generic whites with western values.’
Where is Thy Sting-a-Ling-a-Ling?
James Lasdun
‘The fire department didn't have a tall enough ladder to reach his body.’
