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Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

Maddie Mortimer

This one – it’s a bit of a beast, he said.’

An extract from Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer. Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2022.

Eclogue of the ‘Big Garden’

John Kinsella

‘I will go elsewhere / and remember, recall where / I came from’

A poem by John Kinsella.

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘Enough grief. Enough, enough.’

The editor introduces the issue.

Reproducing Paul

Des Fitzgerald

‘Having a child, I came to see, was more a kind of haunting.’

An essay by Des Fitzgerald.

For the Love of Losing

Marina Benjamin

‘Winning, it turns out, was the cracking whip that meant gamblers had to stay where they were until they lost their money all over again.’

Marina Benjamin on losing.

Hôtel Casanova

Annie Ernaux

‘I never asked myself if I loved P. But nothing could have kept me from going to make love with him at the Hôtel Casanova.’

Memoir by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer.

Misfortune

André Alexis

‘How many children had accidentally – or purposely, for that matter – shot a parent? Too many to count, no doubt.’

Fiction by André Alexis.

This Is as Far as We Come

Carlos Fonseca

‘Those men and women don’t want rubber. They are after something more ethereal but fearsome: the conversion of souls.’

Fiction by Carlos Fonseca, translated by Megan McDowell.

What It Promised

Cian Oba-Smith & Gary Younge

‘As the economy declined African Americans became a larger part of a shrinking and impoverished city.’

Gary Younge introduces the photography of Cian Oba-Smith.

Many Words for Heat, Many Words for Hate

Amitava Kumar

‘In Delhi the heat is chemical, something unworldly, a dry bandage or heating pad wrapped around the body.’

Memoir by Amitava Kumar.

Ausländer

Michael Moritz

‘We were Jews and we were living in plain sight.’

Memoir by Michael Moritz.

Biography of X

Catherine Lacey

‘Grief has a warring logic; it always wants something impossible, something worse and something better.’

An extract from Biography of X by Catherine Lacey.

Ecstatic Joy and Its Variants

Peter Gizzi

‘surely this is about water jetting from a spring, / a languid rafting with no particular destination’

Poetry by Peter Gizzi.

The Public and Private Performance of the Deaf Body

Raymond Antrobus

‘There was always cynicism about Ray being a deaf novelty act.’

Raymond Antrobus on performance, Deafness and Johnnie Ray.