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It Is Decidedly So
Sara Baume
‘There is always a cat sitting on the kitchen windowsill, in the background of every ordinary and extraordinary event, a softly focused silhouette, a pair of piercing eyes.’
Sara Baume responds to twenty-nine photographs from Magnum Photos.
Where the Language Changes
Bathsheba Demuth
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’
Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato massacre.
On Boredom
Nuar Alsadir
‘Boredom is a complicated stink of an emotion, one that is far more layered than we presume.’
Nuar Alsadir on boredom.
Generation Gap
Allen Bratton
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
The Life, Old Age and Death of a Woman of the People
Didier Eribon
‘How little one knows, really, about one’s parents.’
Memoir by Didier Eribon translated by Michael Lucey.
Internal Affairs
Andrea Brady
‘The burden in law on the pregnant person is to show that they are at risk, in need; they must ask, and hope, rather than demand.’
Memoir by Andrea Brady.
Auto Mind
Adrian Daub
‘Today, Germany knows it’s supposed to talk about cars.’
Adrian Daub on car-washing the past.
A World of Networks and Vines
Marie Darrieussecq
‘No one is alone in their bed anymore.’
An excerpt from Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq, translated by Penny Hueston.
My Time Machine
Arthur Asseraf
‘How do we imagine the past of those we love?’
Arthur Asseraf on family and fractured memories.
Reports from the Front: Winter 2023
Peter Englund
‘I repeat: the landscape of war is an acoustic landscape.’
Peter Englund on the war in Ukraine, translated from the Swedish by Sigrid Rausing.
Cairo Song
Wiam El-Tamami
‘I see this everywhere. The creativity, resourcefulness and incredible talent for improvisation in Egypt.’
Wiam El-Tamami on returning to Cairo.
Journal Excerpts 1997–1999
Lydia Davis
‘gormandizing, gluttonous, lickerish, guttling’
Excerpts from Lydia Davis’s diary.
