When I was a small child we lived next door to an old woman. Her name was Mrs Billington, and some nights she’d roam the street like a ghost, in slippers and a long, white nightgown, her white hair loose around her shoulders, looking for her mother. Mrs B gets ‘confused’, my mother told me. … More Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
translated by Daisy Rockwell The older I get and the more I travel, the more I realise how many people hate the English. Not individual English people, you understand, but The English, with a capital T capital E. I can see why. TE have done some good in places (ask the Maltese, ask the Greeks … More Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
Six years ago I visited the Bodies Revealed exhibition when it came to Liverpool. In case you haven’t heard of it, this is an exhibition of real human bodies that have been preserved using silicone rubber, a process known as plastination. The bodies are dissected and put in dynamic poses so you get the chance … More Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
When my brother became a vegetarian in his teens it caused a bit of a flap. This was the mid-1970s, we lived on a council estate in Liverpool, and the nearest we’d got to vegetarianism was eating fish on Fridays. So to find we were living with someone who’d stopped eating meat was like being … More The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
My project for over the Christmas holidays was to sort through my old photographs. It was fun to do but also a little sad. Girls at school, girls at Guide camp, a barbeque on the beach with the boys from the Catholic Youth Service, the fun of the fair with a church music group, an … More A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman (translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen)
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