In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together memories, dreams and nature writing. Exploring everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar, Nina reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and what it means to belong.
'Here then is a little summary of what I need - power, wealth and freedom. It is the hopelessly insipid doctrine that love is the only thing in the world... which hampers us so cruelly. We must get rid of that bogey - and then, then comes the opportunity of happiness and freedom.' So wrote one of our most gifted, but tragically short-lived, writers whose relatively small output has, nevertheless, exercised a powerful influence on modern fiction - indeed, Virginia Woolf confessed that hers was the only writing she was jealous of. Although these letters and extracts from Katherine Mansfield's jo... continue