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Things I Never Told Her
Marian Ryan
‘I will lay down what I want, and I will get it, and prove I am not the kind of woman who is controlled by a man.’
Love in the Graveyards of Industry
Jeremy Seabrook
‘Love was no longer encoded in recognised behaviours, but became subject to private desires and idiosyncratic needs.’
Best Book of 1868: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
Laurie Sheck
‘The beauty of The Idiot lies in its opposition to closed systems.’
On Shakespeare and Aemilia Lanyer
Sandra Simonds
‘I gently propose that for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death we stop reading Shakespeare and shift our attention to the poems of Aemilia Lanyer’. Sandra Simonds on Shakespeare and Aemilia Lanyer.
Labyrinth of the Heart
Mark Slouka
‘Every marriage is forged differently; some crack at a touch, others endure beyond belief, still others are tempered by events and time.’
Possible
Wendell Steavenson
‘I don’t know how to think about this. How to stretch compassion for one person into a million.’ Wendell Steavenson on Europe’s migrant-refugee crisis.
The Interpreters: Among the Brahmins of Benares
Aatish Taseer
‘That first sight of the city curled around the river goes through me like the breath of something old and known and familiar.’ Aatish Taseer revisits Varanasi.
First Sentence: Mika Taylor
Mika Taylor
‘I didn’t want reality to overwrite the story that was forming in my head.’
Best Book of 2008: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Mika Taylor
‘Rivka Galchen’s debut novel is one of my favourites from the last few years.’
Torn Silk and Garlands of Garlic
Teffi
Teffi remembers the Armenian refugees in Novorossiisk during the Russian Revolution.