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Best Book of 1982: A Boy’s Own Story
O Thiam Chin
‘It didn’t occur to me that reading and being a reader was two very distinct things, one an act and a skill, and the other a role and a persona’
O Thiam Chin’s best book of 1982.
Introduction: On Staying at Home
William Atkins
‘If the following pieces can be said to have an overriding characteristic, it is that they take seriously the experience of being a stranger.’
Guest editor William Atkins introduces the issue.
On Mistaking Whales
Bathsheba Demuth
‘The people who lived here lived in the heads of whales.’
A historian from New England goes to the Bering Strait.
The Steepest Places: In the Cordillera Central
Ben Mauk
‘In the mountains, however, Duterte seemed to have met his match.’
Ben Mauk meets the mountains of Luzon.
The Dam
Taran N. Khan
‘Invisible borders are not the same as open borders.’
Taran N. Khan on Hamburg’s Steindamm.
Travelling Secretary
Emmanuel Iduma
‘My life unfolded within the net effect of my father’s choices.’
Memoir by Emmanuel Iduma.
Graffiti Mobili
Jennifer Croft
‘The picture of a postcard is a geograft, a scion of a place thrust into the life of a resident of somewhere else.’
Jennifer Croft on graffiti and the history of the postcard.
The Ninth Spring: One Day at the Kolibi
Kapka Kassabova
Kapka Kassabova visits the Osmanovi family in the southern Balkans.
Tala Zone
Pascale Petit
‘Even when I travel as far as India, you are with me and I am re-entering our cellar.’
Memoir by the poet Pascale Petit.
A Wider Patch of Sky
Javier Zamora & Francisco Cantú
‘We’re so much more than those things. Citizen or undocumented. Border Patrol or immigrant.’
Letters between Javier Zamora and Francisco Cantú.
Boarding Pass
Carlos Manuel Álvarez
‘But the crime did exist; it was Cuba itself.’
Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne.
