Brazil: A User’s Guide
Sort by:
Interview: Yann Faucher
Yann Faucher & Emily Greenhouse
‘I use my body as a material, in an attempt to make it impersonal for the viewer. It’s easy to be your own subject/model, but my primary aim is not narcissism.’
Brief Encounter
Rupert Thomson
‘The man on the other end told me he was looking for sexual fantasies that were about eleven sentences long.’
Jo Broughton | Interview
Jo Broughton & Ollie Brock
‘Jo Broughton’s parents were ‘too busy killing each other’, she says, to know where she went when she ran away from home aged seventeen.’
After Hours
A. M. Homes
‘They have created stage sets, backdrops, candy-coloured scenarios, Kodacolor bright landscapes onto which you can project your fantasies.’
Victor LaValle reads ‘Long Distance’
Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle reads ‘Long Distance,’ an essay about the ‘most loving relationship’ of his early twenties – conducted solely by telephone – and on having sex in a new body, after losing 155 pounds.
Physics and Bonkology
Janice Galloway
‘Sex Education, like winning the pools, was something that did not happen to us.’
Woman’s Body: An Owner’s Manual
Evie Wyld
‘In the year before my first period, my mother gives me a book called Woman’s Body, An Owner’s Manual.’
Wish
Catherine Chung
‘I don’t know exactly what I wanted from you then, except that I wanted it badly.’
Gunzo and Granta’s Collaboration
Ryosuke Saegusa
In this essay, Ryosuke Saegusa, editor of Gunzo magazine, gives a brief history of the...
Catherine Chung | Interview
Catherine Chung & Ollie Brock
‘I think my interest in mathematics was that of a writer: I was always trying to translate it back into a story.’
Don’t Flinch
Adrienne Rich
‘Lichen-green lines of shingle pulsate and waver / when you lift your eyes. It’s the glare.’
A poem by Adrienne Rich.
Cinema’s Invisible Art
Jeremy Sheldon
‘Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture.’
Shahid | Moving Parts
Ruchir Joshi
Ruchir Joshi travelled around rural India for our ‘Work’ issue, documenting parts of the country’s informal economy, and meeting people with working lives that are unseen, or unique, or damaging.
Whiteout
George Murray
‘Turn the engine off, / it says, and hear this original soft / sound, a book of white nothing.’
Ismail Dindar | Working Lives
Ismail Dindar & Alison Culliford
‘Why did I come to France? Well, at school I took French lessons and I got nine out of ten.’
Jonathan Safran Foer | Interview
Jonathan Safran Foer & Ollie Brock
‘This is the sort of book I wanted to read, wanted to have, regretted not having.’
Jess Row | Interview
Jess Row & Ollie Brock
‘What I’m most drawn to in writing about this subject is the way in which very small, intimate acts of violence (not even necessarily physical violence) often serve as a microcosm or incubator for the massive, cataclysmic violence we see all around us in the world.’
A Feudal Outpost in Mount Lebanon
Lana Asfour
‘Intelligent, unpredictable, occasionally ruthless, Jumblatt shows that he is still very much in the game.’
Borges and Me, and Me
Rodrigo Fresán
‘What would be the point of writing anything if I went down in history as the person who killed Borges?’
Work I Never Did
Jeremy Seabrook
‘My mother’s cry rang in my ears from infancy. ‘No child of mine is going into a shoe factory.’’
The Gorilla’s Apprentice
Billy Kahora
‘Real life was the thin couch he slept on at home. Real life was his mother screaming that he needed to face Real Life.’
Natalie Merchant | Interview
Natalie Merchant & Ellah Alfrey
‘Favourite poets, children’s ‘emergence into the world of language’ and their first glimpses of mortality.’
Athena Sees Good Things for You
Patrick Ryan
‘Dear X1, the first document began, On X2, as X3 moves into X4, I want you to turn X5 years into golden wealth.’
David Jégou | Working Lives
David Jégou & Andrew Hussey
‘What I like most is that the staff are all card-carrying Communists – very militant and all passionate about what they are doing.’
Letter from Wyoming
Brad Watson
‘Before I moved to Wyoming in 2005, I was – like a lot of people outside this region, it turns out – not quite sure just where it was.’
Brad Watson | Interview
Brad Watson & Patrick Ryan
‘This story did emerge from the single image of the mother, angry, vacuuming while her three boys watched television, a little dumbfounded and afraid. That’s a memory from my childhood that’s always stuck with me.’
Notes Toward the Memoirs of a Book Thief
Rodrigo Fresán
‘There’s never enough money to buy all the books we need to read or simply admire, hold, caress, knowing that we have them, that they’re ours.’
Non-fiction by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.
Wine Farm Work
Ceridwen Dovey
‘‘Have you always worked hard in your life?’ I asked Drieka on the first day I filmed her.’
Guddu and Pintu | Moving Parts
Ruchir Joshi
‘They examine roads the way I imagine wine-tasters assess a new vintage or a strange grape.’
Marc Pastor | Working Lives
Marc Pastor & Lilian Neuman
‘When I was younger I wanted to be a detective, a clown and a writer, in that order.’
Book Piracy in Peru
Claudia Alva
Claudia Alva’s photographs of an investigation of book piracy in Peru.
