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Rhoda
When I met Rhoda, every bell inside off me started ringing.
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Arts & Culture, Covid-19 Blog, Editor's Pick, Essay, Essay Saturday
How fantasy literature and media can benefit our mental health
What if fantasy literature and media can be beneficial for our mental health, alongside being a huge amount of fun?
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Arts & Culture, Essay Saturday
What Grows in Kangan? Planting the Paracosm in Anthills of the Savannah
Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah is a giant of the late eighties – nominated for the 1987 Booker Prize, it is a combination of several unflinching portraits of humanity ...
Arts & Culture, Covid-19 Blog, Editor's Pick, Essay Saturday
The Healthy Desire For Discomfort
I dream of discomfort. For a year now I have lived a hazy half-life of wool and fleece and sweatpants.
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Arts & Culture, Editor's Pick, Essay Saturday
A “Brilliant Sun”, a “Trap of Bones” – Visions of Pakistan in Moniza Alvi’s -The Country at My Shoulder.
Although it would take me a shameful ten years to realise it, in evoking that disjunct, Alvi’s Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan is a piece of masterful storytelling.
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Arts & Culture, Books, Essay Saturday
The Art of Black Humour
FROM OUR ARCHIVES: It seems a fitting time to declare that there is nothing out there as potent as black comedy to capture the absurdity of life in our time.
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Arts & Culture, Editor's Pick, Essay Saturday
Just Noise – The Barbarian Thrill of Noise in Music
FROM OUR ARCHIVES: “We believed that music is nothing but organized noise. You can take anything—street sounds, us talking, whatever you want—and make it music by organizing it.
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One Noble Truth — Japan Snapshot
Suffering. All life is subject to it. The first of the four Noble Truths, the shisho-tai.
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Editor's Pick, Essay, Essay Saturday
Oyster
Death becomes her in this lyrical exploration of Robert Wiles’ famous photograph.
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HOW I KILLED MY SISTER : CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF GOD
Exploring grief and its devestating ripple effect.
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On becoming a border
On the estate where I grew up there was a woman who delivered the free newspaper. She had stubble all over her chin and on the rolls of neck beneath. ...
Editor's Pick, Essay Saturday, Halloween 2020
Old Haunts: On Halloween, Houses and Home
I have always been haunted by houses, which is fitting – it’s nearly Halloween as I write this. There are seasonal gourds in the shops, pumpkin patches in the fields, ...
A Name Is What You Want It to Be
My grandmother was named after Adolf Hitler. A fact I was not aware of until five years after her death.
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Shalimar
A daughter reflects on her father who died of lung cancer and the recollection of his expulsion from a monastery in Asia, his love of birds and their conversations.
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Hanky
As we head into hanky season, this piece feels timely. Of course, we are always heading into, or residing inside of, hanky season, so it’s always timely.
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Arts & Culture, Editor's Pick, Essay Saturday
Mondegreen
An essay about the idea of love.
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Museums, Museums, Museums
An essay exploring the museum in three parts. First, an account of a childhood experience of a museum, second, through a report about John Nevin, an employee of the V&A ...
Say Something Japanesey
I was reminded of my own difference at the start of every school day, which began with An rolla.
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Dog in a Frame
Headlights are returning to the streets, drifting across the hall from the living-room door….
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I Finally Tried Popeyes’ Spicy Chicken Sandwich
I was in a bit of a pickle, because I had originally wanted Chick-fil-A, but time had become so meaningless that I forgot it was Sunday….
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