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Startled In The Dark
Ryszard Kapuscinski
‘Morning and dusk are by far the best times of day in Africa. The sun is scorching, but these times allow you to live.'
Sandpiper
Ahdaf Soueif
‘Outside, there is a path. A path of beaten white stone bordered by a white wall–low, but not low enough for me to see over it from here'.
In Between Talking about The Elephant
Jackie Kay
‘I discover some rough skin on her elbow. I run my tongue along it’.
The Scrimshaw Violin
Jonathan Levi
‘Madeleine Gordon was not much of a Jew. She was a Starbuck, the daughter of whalers, pirates and other not-so-genteel Semitophobes of Nantucket’.
A Child’s Book of Death and Dying
Abraham Verghese
‘A fine morning mist had rolled down over Addis Ababa from the Entoto mountains, leaving a sheen on the lawn between the apartment buildings'.
The Mermaid
Julia Blackburn
‘The man was still there poised in indecision and staring at the thing which lay heaped at his feet.’
Everything Is Different in Your House
Adam Mars-Jones
‘At the end of the year, an ambulance brought Suseela home from hospital to die’.
A Soap Opera From Hell
Clive Sinclair
‘It comes as no surprise when an ophthalmist informs him that the tears he does produce–the consequence of various allergies–are deficient, poor-quality facsimiles of the real thing.’
The Seventh Man
Haruki Murakami
‘I looked up at the sky. A few grey cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.’
The Assassin
Henk van Woerden
‘He stabbed the man in front of him yet again, three more times, before he was overpowered by the bystanders.’
Henk van Woerden on the assassination of the South African Prime Minister in 1966.
