Second Dispatches from Ambassador to Brazil, Earth
Sort by:
Good Father
David J. Spear
‘My father was up early. Everything was in place: his books in their bag; each prayer and reading marked; his shoes shined, his shirt and collar, his cassock and cope pressed.’
Tiger’s Ghost
Jennie Erdal
‘For nearly fifteen years I wrote hundreds of letters that weren't from me. They ranged from perfunctory thank-you notes and expressions of condolence, to extensive correspondence with the great and the good: politicians, newspaper editors, bishops, members of the House of Lords.’
White Men’s Boats
Giles Foden
‘Deo Gratias stood on the deck of the Liemba with his prisoners at his feet. I leaned on the rail, studiously casual.’
Femme Fatale
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘Looking back on it now, I don't think I was ever actually 'sex shy' (to use one of Prok's pet phrases), but I'll admit I was pretty naive when I first came to him, not to mention hopelessly dull and conventional.’
Put Not Thy Trust In Chariots
Jonathan Tel
'David had nothing against Arabs personally.This despite the fact he was religious (he wore a blue-and-white kippa which had been knitted by his wife, Devorah, as an engagement present.'
Protestant Boy
Geoffrey Beattie
‘I was going home to Belfast to visit my mother. It was the spring of 1998 and the weather was very good for that time of year.’
Problems for Adam and Eve
Jo McMillan
‘It is 1997, and this is the Adam and Eve, the first legal sex shop to open in China – housed here, in a state-run healthcare facility.’
On holiday with James Lord
Patrick Ryan
‘We talked about the snails in the yard that clung dying to the reeds of grass. At 5.05 he looked at his watch again. ‘Where’s the champagne?’’
A Plausible Portrait
Ted Hodgkinson
‘My friends say I am secretive and devious,’ he wrote in the introduction to Picasso and Dora. ‘They’re right.’
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.’
