At that moment, the power was switched off; quite typical of Nigeria, where there has never been a constant power supply. The dining room became dark. I was suspicious of ...
The rain comes as soon as we get off the bus. Heavy, windy rain, and as we struggle up the steps to our hotel on the West Cliff through the ...
It was 3:30 in the afternoon sometime in 2010 and I was just about to leave for Heathrow Terminal 5—virtually my second home—to catch a flight to Mozambique when my ...
The day before his departure, Xiao Lin spent half a day packing his clothes. His wife Ah Fen insisted that he take his winter jacket – and packets of instant ...
Goats make perfect pets, or so I was told. About eight months ago, I decided I wanted one. Nathan was at work. He’s the adult in the house, who asks ...
One of the first things that got me writing about the plight of many Chinese migrants living and working in Britain was the social response to the two most heartbreaking ...
“You want to know why they call me Sugar Daddy?” A slender Chinese man with a pinstripe fedora angled on his head sidles up to Miranda and me, and a ...
It’s astonishing how much time you can sift away doing nothing. Just yesterday, from your place six thousand miles from home, you told two people on the phone that your ...
Four short pieces on guilt, evolution, cheese and travel. Sort of. Continue Reading Alive: Leaky Bits and Pieces
Amboy is a place in the Mojave desert, about 200 miles east of Los Angeles. I hesitate to call it a town: undoubtedly that’s what it used to be, and ...
The Worst Ever Broadway Play An immediate and sensational flop, Moose Murders by Arthur Bicknell is now widely considered to bethe worst play ever performed on Broadway. ‘Ifyour name is ...
When Rio won the 2016 Olympics it was as if the whole city pinched itself. Euphoric crowds sang and danced on the beach while, on the big screen above their ...
January 23, 2010—Dany Laferrière is in Haiti for the literary festival Etonnants Voyageurs. Like so many others, he is caught in the earthquake. Unlike many, he escapes the catastrophe unscathed. ...
I grew up duck hunting. Which I never really liked because you had to wake up at some obscene hour, wade through a freezing swamp and sit in a dark ...
The old gentleman walking down the street looked the same as ever—distinguished but slightly dishevelled, in a Bohemian style, a slow-walking European on an American main street, sad-faced, purposeful but ...
1. Trapped For fear of Chinese soldiers, they only dared walk through the freezing nights, with no light to guide them but the stars. The mountains were black towers before ...
Even if our predecessors had started from land with inadequate supplies, they would have managed well enough as long as they drifted across the sea with the current, in which ...
