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This is Centerville

James Buchan

‘In the imagination of strangers there is a small town in America which represents not just itself but the whole country‘.

At The Villa Moro

Paul Theroux

‘This is my only story. Now that I am sixty I can tell it’.

Destiny

Tim Parks

‘Destiny: there are those who still believe this word has meaning’.

Man Walks Into A Bar

James Kelman

‘I had been living abroad for twelve years and I was gaun hame, maybe forever, maybe a month.‘

An Amateur Spy In Arabia

Norman Lewis

‘In the 1930s I wanted to travel and I wanted to write. In 1935, I published my first book—about a journey to Spain’.

Loser

Aimee Bender

‘Once there was an orphan who had a knack for finding lost things’.

Nothing But Ghosts

Judith Hermann

‘Afterwards Ellen liked to say she had once been to America but couldn't remember it very well.‘

Startled In The Dark

Ryszard Kapuscinski

‘Morning and dusk are by far the best times of day in Africa. The sun is scorching, but these times allow you to live.'

Sandpiper

Ahdaf Soueif

‘Outside, there is a path. A path of beaten white stone bordered by a white wall–low, but not low enough for me to see over it from here'.

In Between Talking about The Elephant

Jackie Kay

‘I discover some rough skin on her elbow. I run my tongue along it’.

The Scrimshaw Violin

Jonathan Levi

‘Madeleine Gordon was not much of a Jew. She was a Starbuck, the daughter of whalers, pirates and other not-so-genteel Semitophobes of Nantucket’.

A Child’s Book of Death and Dying

Abraham Verghese

‘A fine morning mist had rolled down over Addis Ababa from the Entoto mountains, leaving a sheen on the lawn between the apartment buildings'.

The Mermaid

Julia Blackburn

‘The man was still there poised in indecision and staring at the thing which lay heaped at his feet.’

Everything Is Different in Your House

Adam Mars-Jones

‘At the end of the year, an ambulance brought Suseela home from hospital to die’.