‘I groaned inwardly when anybody mentioned Pather Panchali and my small part in it.’
The story of Satyajit Ray’s struggle to make one of the world’s best-loved films, Pather Panchali, is well known: his commitment, his lack of funds, the shooting that started and stopped, his belief that India could be depicted a new way, though he had never made a film before. He took his story…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘The opening day of the tour covered the Iveragh peninsula.’
A story by Noel O’Regan, author of Though the Bodies Fall.
‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
‘She is well-behaved, as icons go, she toes the party line.’
Short fiction by the author of Our Wives Under the Sea.
‘The woman dies. She dies to provide a plot twist. She dies to develop the narrative. She dies for cathartic effect. She dies because no one could think of what else to do with her.’ Aoko Matsuda, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.
‘I grew up in the semi-tropical south, dotted by wet paddy fields, but I always wanted to go to the north.’
‘You were Father’s and I was Mother’s.’
Memoir by Suzanne Brøgger, translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight.
