Explore Essays and memoir
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To Zinder
Sven Lindqvist
Obsessed with a single line from Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness – Kurtz’s injunction to ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ – Sven Lindqvist set out across Central Africa, and wrote a book that revealed precisely what Europe’s imperial powers had exacted on Africa’s people over the course of the preceding two centuries.
Best Book of Any Year: A Thousand and One Nights
Mazen Maarouf
Mazen Maarouf on why A Thousand and One Nights is the best book of any year.
Best Book of 1993: The Smell of Apples
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene on Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples.
On Meeting Mrs Obama
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
‘Michelle’s story, while deeply rooted in the American story, speaks to experiences that are universal.’
Dreams for Hire
Gabriel García Márquez
‘The wave had erupted with such force that it obliterated the glass lobby.‘ Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.
The Guests
Hisham Matar
‘Strangely, it was Joseph Conrad who introduced me to Edward Said and not the other way around.’
Kiltykins
Ved Mehta
‘When I was seeing Kilty (how, even today, the word 'seeing' mesmerizes me), the fact of my blindness was never mentioned, referred to, or alluded to’.
Itinerant
Andrew Miller
‘Was this an adventure or was I in trouble? At what point did one begin to shade into the other?’
Boxing
Fatima Farheen Mirza
Fatima Farheen Mirza on navigating gender roles in a Muslim family, wearing hijab and learning how to box.
