Explore Essays and memoir
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How to Write About Africa
Binyavanga Wainaina
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
One Day I Will Write About This Place
Binyavanga Wainaina
‘We are, it seems, in the middle of nowhere.’
Arithmetic on the Frontier
Declan Walsh
‘These days the tempest of Taliban violence ripping across the frontier has shaken Peshawar to its core.’
Frank’s Place
Richard Williams
‘Marilyn Monroe spent a couple of nights at the Cal-Neva. Sinatra knew she was in a bad way.’
Letter from Wyoming
Brad Watson
‘Before I moved to Wyoming in 2005, I was – like a lot of people outside this region, it turns out – not quite sure just where it was.’
Woman’s Body: An Owner’s Manual
Evie Wyld
‘In the year before my first period, my mother gives me a book called Woman’s Body, An Owner’s Manual.’
Life and Breasts
Ludmila Ulitskaya
‘Death is here, by our side, and we can make no witty Nabokovian jokes about it.’
A Thousand Splendid Stuns
Morwari Zafar
‘More important than anything else that fateful year was the life-defining transcendence of Peter Gabriel.’
Self-Consciousness: Memoirs by John Updike
Edmund White
‘The freedom conferred by masks. Children and current wives cannot blame you for what your characters do and say.’