Memoir
Sticky, slithery, squelchy, smacky: the authentic Chinese food experience
Fuchsia Dunlop enjoys a rich variety of dishes throughout China, including drunken hairy crabs, crisp pig’s ears, giant carp’s tails and delicate ducks’ tongues
The man who loves volcanoes
Clive Oppenheimer feels a deep kinship with the many volcanoes he has studied. When he is airlifted from Mount Erebus, he suffers ‘the heartache of leaving a lover’
Tales of the Midwest: The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard, reviewed
Violence and death are balanced by hard-won, transcendent joy in Beard’s remarkable stories that merge fiction and memoir
The waking nightmare
After years of insomnia, Marie Darrieussecq derives some comfort from finding herself in the company of Kafka, Kant, Proust, Dostoevsky, Borges and Plath
Violence overshadowed my Yorkshire childhood
Catherine Taylor describes her anxiety growing up in Sheffield against an ‘uneasy backdrop’ of picketing miners, the Hillsborough disaster and a serial killer on the loose
Beware of pity
In her powerful memoir-cum-manifesto, Selina Mills tells us what she misses most, what irritates her most and why she won’t have a guide dog
Nostalgia for old, rundown coastal Sussex
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
Man for hire
Shoji Morimoto offers himself to strangers in Tokyo to queue on their behalf, make a fuss of their dogs or simply provide a human presence
A celebration of the music of Jamaica
Abandoned in infancy, Alex Wheatle grew up in children’s homes, but found salvation in roots reggae – and, eventually, his father in Jamaica
A feminist finds fulfilment in derided ‘women’s work’
Like many women in mid-life, Marina Benjamin found herself caring for the very young and the elderly – leading her to ‘a radical feminist turn’
A 1,000-mile trek through the Caucasus finally clears the mind
Scarred by reporting the Beslan school siege in 2004, Tom Parfitt embarks on a gruelling – and ultimately healing – journey from the Black Sea to the Caspian
Ireland’s most notorious murderer still casts a disturbing spell
After months of conversations with Ireland’s most notorious murderer, Mark O’Connell got both more and less than he bargained for, says Frances Wilson
Advice to struggling writers
Broad in scope and beautifully written, this unconventional autobiography contains some of the best advice struggling writers will ever receive
The Anne Frank story continues
Hannah Pick-Goslar, a survivor of the Holocaust and Anne’s friend in Amsterdam, movingly describes their snatched conversations in Belsen before Anne disappeared forever
Labour of love? What women need to know about childbirth
Pregnant women are still woefully ill-prepared for the gruelling experience ahead of them and the life-changing damage that often results, says Lucy Jones
The shocking truth behind the Baghdad bombings of 1950 and 1951
Avi Shlaim claims to have uncovered undeniable proof that Zionist agents were responsible for targeting the Jewish community, forcing them to flee Iraq and settle in Israel
A last-minute escape from the Holocaust
In a profoundly moving family memoir, Daniel Finkelstein describes the miracle by which his mother, as a child, was rescued from the hell of Belsen
Proud to be British
Sunder Katwala, of Indian-Irish heritage, analyses the whiteness of the Remain vote, seeing Britain’s pro-European movement as a case of cosmopolitanism without diversity
Polly Toynbee searches in vain for one working-class ancestor
Though many of her distinguished forebears campaigned vigorously against privilege and conservative elitism, they were still too posh for Toynbee’s comfort
Laughing in the face of cancer
Sylvia Patterson manages to bring much rackety humour to bear in her descriptions of the pain and indignity her treatment involves
The root of the problem
The novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo is attracted by the freedom a New York job promises, but misses the young daughter she has left behind in London
Literary charades
Blending fact and fiction, France combines a tale of antics on a creative writing course with episodes from her family life
Andrew Motion pays tribute to his poetic mentors
In a second memoir, Motion focuses on how he became a poet, and his search for father figures, including W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin
Pie in the sky
Frieda Hughes adopts an unfledged orphan bird, regarding him as ‘a magical creature’ – but few others find him so engaging
Britain’s churches need us to survive – but do we still need them?
Attendance is in serious decline, but our churches have much to offer, especially in times of crisis, and we neglect their crumbling fabric at our peril
