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Explore Essays and memoir

Soon Comes Night

Ekow Eshun

‘I’d become so used to hiding away inside myself I couldn’t respond with any spontaneity. I was stuck in the shallows of my emotions.’

When We Fight, We Have Our Children With Us

Madeline ffitch

‘We are all politically involved whether we like it or not, and children are already on the frontlines.’

Vinyl Road Trip

David Flusfeder

After an unexpected email, David Flusfeder heads to Detroit to discover his father’s history and the world of vinyl manufacturing.

Tshinanu

Naomi Fontaine

‘Language is a risk that a nation takes. If a language survives, its people do too.’ Translated from the French by David Homel.

Tshinanu

Naomi Fontaine

Plus tard, ils me diront comme tu étais un grand homme. Un savant. Un érudit de la chasse.

Between Them

Richard Ford

‘It was my child’s outlook to think most things were right. And yet if life’s eternal drama is of events seeking a more perfect state, their life and mine was not that.’

The Survivals of Lafcadio Hearn

Kenny Fries

‘Did Hearn feel comfortable in Japan because being a foreigner overshadowed his physical difference?’

Language In Exile

Mireille Gansel

One summer’s day, for the first time, Mitzi broached the past. Past in the present, so present, with everything it had deposited in this room that suddenly seemed so vast. Everything that the grim tide deposits on the shores of a life.

On the Road

Janine di Giovanni

‘But I still get homesick, that vast and deep pit in the stomach, every time I go away.’

Second Mother

Sinéad Gleeson

‘The cortex shrinks where the cells used to be. The spaces in between expand. Islands in the sea of the mind. An archipelago of the former self.’ Sinéad Gleeson on Alzheimer's disease.

On Jesus’ Son

Eli Goldstone

‘Jesus’ Son is a song, a glorious clear hymn, full of the notes of bad decisions, of rotten fucking luck, of causing real and lasting damage to yourself and to the people around you.’

The Recall of Herman Harcourt

Colin Grant

‘I had the queer feeling of looking into a mirror of the projected future, of perhaps seeing how easily his fall could be a rehearsal for my own.’

Spiders from Jerusalem

Wioletta Greg

‘When the Holy Family was fleeing from Jerusalem, spiders wove such a thick web around the road that the swords of Herod’s soldiers couldn’t pierce it.’

Eliza Griswold | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Eliza Griswold

‘Even in its subtler forms, the act of looking is an act of self-regard.’