Sarah Emily Duff

Associate Professor, Colby College. Former Senior Researcher, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand. PhD (History); MSc (Women's Health). I am an historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Africa and the British Empire, interested in histories of age, gender, and reproduction.

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Non-Work Reading, 2025

Rachel Aviv, Strangers to Ourselves

Anne Berest, Postcard

Brigid Brophy, The King of a Rainy Country

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, Under the Jaguar Sun

Susan Choi, Flashlight

Mathias Énard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

Paula Fox, Borrowed Finery

Esther Freud, My Sister and Other Lovers

Elliott Gish, Grey Dog

Michelle Green, The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier

Nick Harkaway, Karla's Choice

Jill Ker Conway, The Road from Coorain

RO Kwon, Exhibit

Daniel M. Lavery, Women's Hotel

Yoko Ogawa, Mina's Matchbox

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (re-read)

Samuel Richardson, Clarissa

Kate Riley, Ruth

Arundhati Roy, Mother May Comes to Me

Norman Rush, Mating

Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

Emily Witt, Health and Safety

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Four Posts on Clarissa

In 2025 I joined a collective effort to read Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1745) in real time. I contributed four posts to the group Substack:

Plotting--on plots and plotting in this early experiment with the novel.

Midsummer--on the significance of the summer solstice and dreams in Clarissa.

Money, Get Away--on money, inheritance, and marriage.

Great Presence of Mind--on Clarissa's fate.

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Non-Work Reading, 2024

Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

Jonny Steinberg, Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage

Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession

Helen Garner, This House of Grief, Monkey Grip, The Children's Bach

Elena Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico

Margaret Drabble, The Peppered Moth

Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Gretel and the Great War

Gabriel Weisz Carrington, The Invisible Painting: My Memoir of Leonora Carrington

Lauren Elkin, Scaffolding

Miranda July, All Fours

Roberto Bolaño, By Night in Chile

Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm*

Claire Messud, A Dream Life

Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables

Sarah Moss, My Good Bright Wolf

Nastassja Martin, In the Eye of the Wild

Gabriel García Márquez, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

*Re-read

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Non-Work Reading, 2023

Emma Cline, The Guest, The Girls

Alexander Stille, The Sullivinians

Barbara Trapido, Temples of Delight

Elizabeth Mavor, A Green Equinox

Cesare Pavese, The Beautiful Summer

Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

Benjamin Wurgaft and Merry White, Ways of Eating

Angelica Garnett, Deceived with Kindness

Olivia Laing, Funny Weather

Claire Messud, The Burning Girl

Elisa Shua Dusapin, The Pachinko Parlour

Lauren Elkin, No. 91/92

Lisa Appignenesi, Everyday Madness

Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair

Leah Ypi, Free

John Berger, To the Wedding

Sigrid Nuñez, A Feather on the Breath of God

Deborah Levy, August Blue

Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost

Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

Nawal El Saadawi, Love in the Kingdom of Oil

Margaret Kennedy, The Feast

Nora Ephron, Crazy Salad

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Non-Work Reading, 2022

Sybille Bedford, A Compass Error

Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads

Isabel Colegate, The Shooting Party

Penelope Fitzgerald, Innocence

Deborah Levy, Real Estate

John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Call for the Dead, Tinker, Taylor, Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People, A Legacy of Spies

Elif Batuman, Either/Or

Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

Laura Cumming, On Chapel Sands

Yukio Mishima, The Sound of the Waves

Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky

Lily Dunn, Sins of my Father

Monica Baldwin, I Leap Over the Wall

Felicity Cloake, Red Sauce, Brown Sauce

Barbara Trapido, Brother of the More Famous Jack, The Traveling Horn Player

Alex Michaelides, The Maidens

Mark Prins, The Latinist

JL Carr, A Month in the Country

EM Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

Sarah Perry, After Me Comes the Flood

Cho Nam-ju, Kim Ji-young, Born 1982

Sheila Rowbatham, Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties

Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey

Auberon Waugh, The Foxglove Saga

Emily Ogden, On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays

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My new book, Childhood and Youth in African History, has been published by Palgrave.

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Review of Neverending Quest for the Other Shore

My review of Sylvie Kandé's The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos for Consequence Forum.

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Non-Work Reading, 2021

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents Mary Renault, The Friendly Young Ladies Sigrid Nunez, What are You Going Through Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking about This Nicola Lagioia, Ferocity Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile Magda Szabó, Abigail Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic Erin French, Finding Freedom China Miéville, Perdido Street Station Marilynn Robinson, Jack Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos Cristina Sandu, The Union of Synchronised Swimmers Philippe Sands, East West Street Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You Rachel Cusk, Second Place Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults Lauren Groff, Matrix Sybille Bedford, A Compass Error

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The King Pelican.

Ruth Manning-Sanders, The Glass Man and the Golden Bird, illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus (New York: Roy Publishers, Inc.,1968). Hungarian Folk and Fairy Tales.

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Novels, Short Stories, and Essays Read, 2020

Susan Choi, Trust Exercise

Susan Choi, My Education

Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column

Miriam Toews, Women Talking

Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation

Aleksandra Lun, The Palimpsests

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Deborah Levy, The Man Who Saw Everything

Rosamund Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz

Sinead Gleeson, Constellations

Keletso Mopai, If You Keep Digging

Geraldine Brooks, March

Jenny Offill, Weather

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Claire Messud, The Last Life

Francesca Melandri, Eva Sleeps

Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

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Down flew the dragon …. 

“Who dares to steal fruit from my orchard?” he yelled. Then he saw the sword in Nicko’s hand and his rage melted into a foolish grin.

Ruth Manning-Sanders, The Glass Man and the Golden Bird, illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus (New York: Roy Publishers, Inc.,1968). Hungarian Folk and Fairy Tales.

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Novels, Essays, and Memoirs Read, 2019

Deborah Eisenbeg, Your Duck is My Duck

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters

Sally Rooney, Normal People

Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution

Tommy Orange, There, There

Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

Heidi Julavits, The Uses of Enchantment

Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts

Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

R.O. Kwon, The Incendiaries

Maylis de Kerangal, The Cook

Anne Serre, The Governesses

Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman is in Trouble

Jean Hannah Edelstein, This Really Isn’t About You

Mesha Maren, Sugar Run

Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

Elisa Gabbert, The Word Pretty

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan

Sigrid Nunez, Mitz

Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

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Then the sunset maidens shone bright with happiness, …

Gladys Masters, Return to Downland, New Old-Time Fairy Tales, illustrated by Nina K. Brisley (London: The Grant Educational Co. Ltd, 1939).

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Novels and Memoirs Read in 2018

The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson

Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone

Gunnhild Øyehaug, Knots

Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding

Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know

Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living

Nicole Krauss, Great House

Leila Slimani, The Perfect Nanny

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company

John Banville, Mrs Osmond

Edward St Aubyn, Dunbar

Sarah Perry, Melmoth

Claire Messud, The Emperor’s Children

Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Light Years

Jennifer Egan, The Invisible Circus

Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure

Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

Alan Hollinghurst, The Sparsholt Affair

Elizabeth Catte, What you’re getting wrong about Appalachia

Laurie Colwin, Home Cooking

Madeleine Miller, Circe

Forrest Leo, The Gentleman

James Hamilton-Paterson, Cooking with Fernet Branca

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1972

Sylvia Plath, The Colossus (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).

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Dried Fruit and the Cocktail Menace

I’ve contributed a post on food, race, purity, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in interwar South Africa to the Historical Cooking Project.

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Back cover.

The Children’s Story Book, (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, no date (1952).