‘He was desperate for the photograph to cease to exist: as if the man in the photo and he are competing for the same oxygen.’
One day in August 2003, I heard that Qutubuddin Ansari was moving to Calcutta. This man, whose photograph had been reproduced a thousand times in newspapers and magazines, had, reluctantly, become a national figure. He was a tailor. In the photograph, now as famous in its way as the picture of the n…
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‘She must have loved gold seeing that everything in the penthouse was gold. We didn’t sit. Fear didn’t let us see where to sit.’ A story by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘I had also, a week earlier, been fired for trying to sleep with my boss’s husband. I got the idea from a book, or maybe every book.’ A story by Emily Adrian.
‘The Mitsubishi conglomerate controls a forty per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna; they are freezing and hoarding huge stocks of the fish every year.’ Katherine Rundell on extinction speculation.
‘Two roof tiles are missing to the rear: the kiss of death. Without repair, ruination is now inevitable. Until then, this is my best hope of shelter.’ Cal Flyn visits the island of Swona in northern Scotland.
‘I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures. / For as long as I can remember my body was a small town nightmare.’ A poem by Ocean Vuong.
‘Never, long as I live, will I forget the few days I had spent with the Millers.’ Buddhadeva Bose on his friendship with Henry Miller.
‘A scene in which nothing is ostensibly happening will absorb me; so will a paragraph that contains no vital piece of information.’
