The Perfect Companion
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The Marriage Finger
Kathryn Scanlan
‘On the marriage finger was a gold ring topped with a big prong-set stone.’ New fiction by Kathryn Scanlan.
The Last Rite of the Body
Sophie Mackintosh
‘My ex-boyfriend dies, and we all gather to put our hands into his body.’ New fiction from Sophie Mackintosh.
Bookshelves: John Berger in My Family Album
Amitava Kumar
‘The contours of the family arranged on the bookshelf shifted.’
In Conversation
Joanna Kavenna & Peter Pomerantsev
‘We are real in an unreal reality, which we’re told is really real and that we’re actually unreal.’
The Spread
Ben Lerner
‘He began to feel less like he was delivering a speech and more like a speech was delivering him.’
Read an extract from Ben Lerner’s latest novel, The Topeka School.
Innards
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene
‘To pick the right heart, the old man said, you had to look for depth in the ruby, to prize a raw intensity of colour and a bright gold fat blanketing the angry muscle.’
The Line
Amor Towles
‘It didn’t take long for the citizens of Moscow to realize that if you had no choice but to stand in line, then Pushkin was the man to stand next to.’
Longshore Drift
Julia Armfield
‘She has never been very keen on the thought of herself as other people see her.’
Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova
Haruki Murakami
‘That was the setup for the review I wrote about this imaginary record.’ Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.
H+
Matthieu Gafsou & Daisy Hildyard
‘It’s a shadow-world: strangely familiar, all the same.’ Daisy Hildyard introduces Mattieu Gafsou’s photoessay on transhumanism.
Field Notes on a Marriage
Te-Ping Chen
‘I tell myself it doesn’t do to fixate too much on the dead: apart from everything else, they can’t answer you.’
Good Progress
Jem Calder
‘I released the picture of my mother’s breast, which resized itself to auto-fit my smartphone’s display.’
Visitors Welcome
Thomas Pierce
‘Our reasons for purchasing a reJesus no doubt require little explanation.’
Schenectady
Adam O’Fallon Price
‘To be fair, it is near a waterfall; although, to be fair again, everything around here is near a waterfall.’
A Woman Screaming
Saskia Vogel
‘I realized that neither revenge nor compulsive storytelling would release me from this pain.’
Going Home
Raja Shehadeh
Read an excerpt from Raja Shehadeh’s Going Home, a reflection on ageing, failure, the occupation, and the changing face of Ramallah.
Insurrecto
Gina Apostol
‘She does not go home for her mother's funeral because the prospect of return gives her insomnia. She splurges on a coat from Miu Miu instead.’
Karen Olsson | Notes on Craft
Karen Olsson
Karen Olsson shares her notes on the craft of writing: ‘Every book is an unsolvable problem, and yet every time I convince myself I’m just on the verge of cracking it.’
The Wind That Lays Waste
Selva Almada
‘Leni’s last image of her mother is from the rear window of the car.’
In Conversation
Elvia Wilk & Leah Dieterich
‘Dystopia is always already here, and so is utopia. What does it mean to accept that we're already living in both?’
Night on Fire
Darcey Steinke
‘I know what’s going to happen and I know that it’s going to be bizarre.’
