Explore Essays and memoir
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Uwaa: the sound of the feeling that cannot be spoken
Polly Barton
An excerpt from Fifty Sounds, a memoir by Polly Barton, translator of Aoko Matsuda and Kikuko Tsumura.
Mould
Alice Ash
‘There was fur on the window frame, and we drew into it with our fingernails: dark, mushroomy bursts.’
A new essay by Alice Ash.
Crystals
Kate Lebo
‘Sam had a urate crystal in his toe, built by genes and rich eating.’
Kate Lebo on Xylitol.
Lice
A. K. Blakemore
‘I often had head lice as a child. Outbreaks circulated around my primary school on a seasonal basis.’
A new essay from the author of The Manningtree Witches.
An Ounce of Gold and Máxima Acuña Atalaya
Joseph Zárate
‘To end up with an ounce of gold – enough to make a wedding ring – you need to extract fifty tonnes of earth, or the contents of forty removal lorries.’
On Vulnerability
Katherine Angel
‘Is anyone an authority on themselves, whether on their sexuality or anything else?’
An excerpt from Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again.
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘Perhaps in isolation a new form of communication is emerging, expressing what readers and writers have always told one another, via books and letters and on the literary stage: I hear you. You are not alone.’
The Stinky Ocean
Ian Jack
‘It was a peculiar, alopecic landscape of hummocks and gullies, with patches of grass growing on what looked like white earth, and rarely a soul to be seen.’
When the Cholera Came
Lindsey Hilsum
‘It was hard not to wonder if the disease was a kind of divine retribution – collective punishment for a collective crime.’
Victim and Accused
Vidyan Ravinthiran
‘I’m curious about the refusal to countenance a connection between disparate experiences – a route by which empathy could travel.’
Abbandonati
Rory Gleeson
‘One day, 200 people’s X-rays showed they needed intensive care in order to survive.’
Al-Birr Islamic Trust Morgue, Greenwich Islamic Centre, April 2020
Gus Palmer & Poppy Sebag-Montefiore
‘Palmer’s portraits of Kafil Ahmed sit alongside those of other people risking their lives to take care of others.’
The Mezzanine, or: The Most Important Book About Nothing You’ll Ever Read
Joel Golby
‘It’s like taking an escalator trip into someone else’s mind for an hour, finding nothing of actual substance up there, and realising, as you retreat mournfully back into your own skull, that there’s nothing there, either.’
