Posts by Alec Ash

They may look friendly, but they're stone cold killers

In the resort towns of the Crimea, holidaymakers from the heartlands of Russia laze on short beaches of lumpy shingle, the Black Sea lapping at their feet. They lie on straw mats, fat red bellies up like beached manatees, hardly a gap visible between them. Occasionally one turns over, like a pancake flipping itself on the hob.

Confessions of a heroin addict

"You don't know what it's like to have your brain trying to sabotage you." Michael Kelly sweeps a waterfall of black hair away from his eyes. "Part of me still just wants to shut myself in my room and get fucked up."

Michael is 20 years old, and a recovering heroin addict. And he’s right. I may have scoffed a shroom at university, but to be addicted to one of the most potent recreational drugs out there is beyond my ken. I can only listen – hooked.

Miscellania from a novelist's mind

In the spring, your humble correspondent talked with novelist Ian McEwan for the online feature FiveBooks (where I work). Read the full interview here. It was a wideranging conversation across the sofa in McEwan’s London house. In fact, it was so eclectic – two hours of it – that there was some interesting runoff that didn’t make the cut. Here it is for readers of the Anthill.

Welcome to the Anthill – a new home for narrative writing from or on China, as if the world needed another website about this place.

There are three compensations for this inexcusable act of creation.

First: we follow stories, not the news. We're not fussed about the latest trending item to get knocked about the echo chamber. We prefer the vignette about going on Chinese TV, or stray conversation on a train, that would otherwise go unwritten.