‘For Fataumata, and others like her, dying tragically is dying naturally.’
I’m thinking of a girl: the youngest daughter of the great-great-grandmother of my great-grandmother.
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‘These students only learn about Mauritius through our country’s literature; they are taught little to no Mauritian history.’
Ariel Saramandi visits a lycée in Mauritius.
‘The next editor of the university newspaper was chosen each year by a panel.’
A short story by Frances Leviston, set in the cut-throat world of student journalism.
‘He began to feel less like he was delivering a speech and more like a speech was delivering him.’
An extract from Ben Lerner’s latest novel, The Topeka School.
‘I thought she was the prettiest girl in our school. No one else seemed to think so.’
A short story about a high school friendship, by Che Yeun.
‘After my first day of clown school I tried to drop out.’
Nuar Alsadir goes to clown school at Yale.
‘He stood, rubbing his arms. How long had he slept? Not knowing the time was one of the torments of Pentonville.’
‘A democracy, I said, is driven by the electoral process, and in elections there are victories and defeats.’
‘I lost my left ear from a bite. . .Through the thin slit that remains I can hear the sounds of the world.’
‘Europeans want a fictitious Latin America on to which they can project their own desires. They want a Latin America which satisfies a longing for political engagement that is not possible in their own countries.’
‘They spoke naturally - without any sense of guilt - and were intrigued and surprised that people had come from so far away, and that there was so much excitement, because of one little incident.’
Robert Chandler on why The Years Between by Rudyard Kipling is the best book of 1919
