‘Sometimes he would sit on the sofa in his dressing gown and mumble something about the emotional labour of the commute.’
New fiction by Theo Macdonald.
Interview | Orlando Reade in Conversation by Marina Scholtz
‘I was told very early on by people in publishing that there is no market for literary criticism – none.’
Marina Scholtz speaks to Orlando Reade.
Archive | Reflections by Louis MacNeice
‘I look in the mirror at night / And see two rooms’
This poem by Louis MacNeice originally appeared in the May 1960 edition of The London Magazine.
Archive | The Recreation Ground by Graham Swift
‘Father killed her. Not with the knife, no, nor with the pistol, nor even with the blunt instrument. It was the old weapon – hatred.’
Short fiction by Graham Swift.
Podcast | Joshua Jones
‘I don’t want to be a representative for a nation state.’
We chatted to Joshua Jones, author of Local Fires, about the benefits of multiple POVs and interconnected stories, how not to get sued when writing autofiction and his love of Chicago indie rock band, Joan of Arc.
Interview | Eliza Clark: Seven Questions
‘There’s a great deal of horror to be found when desire is misaimed or curdles – our desires are often an expression of the systems of power we exist in.’
Eliza Clark interviewed by Zadie Loft.
Fiction | Un by Louie Conway
‘The baby has come to understand the world as reducible into categories, an indefinitely vast space populated by discrete objects with dedicated names and stable locations.’
Runner-up in the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize 2024: Louie Conway’s ‘Un’.
Interview | Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh on Manuscripts and Miniatures
‘In this complex world where human kind is divided into tiny sections, I hope we all can find the unity we are meant to have.’
Eric Block interviews artist Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh and curator Esen Kaya.
Review | I for I: Occupations that Blind by Zoe Valery
‘The writing of Pleasure Gardens – and its reading – constitutes an act of resistance; a reclaiming of the digital narrative space that has been blacked out by the state and overwritten by its propaganda machine.’
Zoe Valery reviews ‘Pleasure Gardens’.
Archive | Raymond Chandler by Ian Fleming
‘In the end, said Chandler, as one grew older, one grew out of gangsters and blondes and guns and, since they were the chief ingredients of thrillers, short of space fiction, that was that.’
Ian Fleming recounts his friendship with Raymond Chandler.
Review | Surveillance in Miniature by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
‘Fatima subtly observes that domesticity – the unit of the family, the capitalist-defined utopia of social togetherness, of selfhood and nationhood itself – always depends on the poor who stand outside of it.’
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou reviews ‘Is Someone There?’.
News | Amaan Hyder wins The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2024
‘A deeply impressive range of stories, both in style and subject. Together they offer a picture of contemporary life in miniature.’
Benjamin Markovits on the winners of this year’s Short Story Prize.
Interview | Purgatory by the Sea: Jon Fosse in Conversation
‘To me, writing is best described as listening. And at a certain point it is as if the text is already written: it exists out there somewhere, and I just have to write it down before it disappears.’
Zadie Loft interviews Jon Fosse.
Archive | Heresies by Deborah Levy
‘What purpose does realism serve? … I asked … Are images of starving children, beaten workers, brutal factory owners … realistic? Myself, I think they’re absurd.’
Short fiction by Deborah Levy.
Interview | Laughter and Tears: Alejandro Zambra in Conversation
‘Saying that fiction is untrue, that it is something of a lie, is as imprecise as saying that a song is a lie, that a joke is a lie, that a painting is a lie.’
An interview with Alejandro Zambra by Magnus Rena.
Review | Poor Art, Rich Rewards by Daisy Sainsbury
‘Arte povera and its afterlife strike me as exemplary of the fate of counter-current movements that so quickly lose their revolutionary value and are subsumed into the institutions they originally set out to critique.’
Daisy Sainsbury reviews ‘Arte Povera’.
Guide | London in Five: November 2024
‘Through these dolls, I aim to challenge throwaway culture and the boundaries of traditional art, encouraging a more sustainable and playful approach to creativity.’
What’s on in London this November.
Archive | Letter in November by Sylvia Plath
‘I love them. / I love them like history.’
This poem by Sylvia Plath originally appeared in the April 1963 edition of The London Magazine, alongside six other poems of hers.
Staff Picks | Halloween
In honour of the scariest day of the year, the team at The London Magazine share their favourite books, stories and poems in the generously-applied category of ‘spooky’ fiction, film and poetry.
Choices include works by M. R. James, Angela Carter and Niall Campbell.
Fiction | Submechanophobia by Charlotte Tierney
‘Bill had never worried about how others received him, or his behaviour. He prioritised, instead, being as much himself as possible, for the sake of his art.’
New fiction by Charlotte Tierney.
Archive | Blacamán the Good Miracle Seller by Gabriel García Márquez
‘In those days I had no powers against death, so I simply lay down in the least painful position to await it, while he sank into a delirium about a woman so lovely that she could pass through walls with a sigh.’
Short fiction by Gabriel García Márquez.
Interview | The Garden as Political Metaphor with Olivia Laing and Richard Porter
‘The garden is a space to think differently, to understand time differently and to understand how to cope with abundance, followed by loss, followed by abundance, followed by loss. It’s an anti-capitalist clock.’
Olivia Laing and Richard Porter in conversation with Zadie Loft.
Interview | ‘Freedom in Multitudes’: Explorations of the Self with Sosa Omorogbe
‘The fragmented self is the self. That feeling of not being one thing but multiple threads intertwined into one physical, corporeal form, that is what it feels like to be human. I don’t think traditional portraiture where the figure is posed and sat always captures that.’
Zadie Loft speaks to gallerist and curator, Sosa Omorogbe.
Archive | The Mother of the Child in Question by Doris Lessing
‘A rich and various lunacy inspired the human race and you could almost say the greater part of his work was dealing with this lunacy.’
Short fiction by Doris Lessing.