Mailing List


Sophie Mackintosh
Sophie Mackintosh's fiction has appeared in Granta and The Stinging Fly, among others. She was the winner of the 2016 White Review Short Story Prize and the Virago X Stylist short story prize. Her debut novel, The Water Cure, is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and forthcoming from Doubleday in the US.

Articles Available Online


Lena Andersson's ‘Acts of Infidelity’

Book Review

July 2018

Sophie Mackintosh

Book Review

July 2018

Acts of Infidelity is the second novel by Lena Andersson that follows unlucky-in-love heroine Ester Nilsson, and it’s another scalpel-sharp look at a doomed...

Fiction

May 2018

Self-Improvement

Sophie Mackintosh

Fiction

May 2018

I had been sent back from the city in disgrace, back to my parents’ house in the country. It...

Jerusalem has a remarkably cohesive identity, in architectural terms Every building, from the Western Wall to the sleek hotels and high-rises in the newer parts of town, is constructed of the same sandy-coloured limestone, a measure put in place by British authorities who governed between 1917 and 1947 This surface uniformity connects Jerusalem with the wider Jewish landscape, across time and space: ‘Jerusalem stone’ has been a feature of the city’s architecture since ancient times, when residents collected blocks from the local quarry (now a bustling station) to build their homes, and it is used in buildings worldwide to symbolise connection with the holy city In 2010, a Brazilian Pentecostal church signed a reported £8 million contract with Israel, enabling them to import enough Jerusalem stone to build a $300 million, 55-metre-high replica of Solomon’s Temple – complete with olive groves, Ark of the Covenant and helicopter landing pad – in São Paulo   But the lights and sounds of Jerusalem’s streets tell a different story, one of conflict and contradictions At night, the tips of mosque minarets glow green against the neon lights of the city’s modern hubs, while muezzins compete not only with church bells but with busy traffic At the Western Wall, the plaza of prayer is split by a dividing wall which segregates the sexes, though tourists and worshippers are left to mingle On the women’s side, a bored sweeper patrols while tourists take selfies beside a woman in a headscarf, who mutters devoutly and touches the wall in reverence; nearby stands an incongruous lectern, hosting prayer books in all languages and a discarded plastic glass, half full of warm Coke Jerusalem’s Old City – just one square kilometre, with over 400 surveillance cameras crammed into crevices in the stone – is divided into Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters, pockets which define themselves both within and against the rest of the city   The differences between sectors are barely perceptible to outsiders: across the Old City, streets are flanked with marketstalls selling ubiquitous slogan T-shirts and babygros, where ‘Free Palestine’ hangs next to ‘SuperJew’, ‘Hello Jerusalem’ next to

Contributor

April 2016

Sophie Mackintosh

Contributor

April 2016

Sophie Mackintosh’s fiction has appeared in Granta and The Stinging Fly, among others. She was the winner of the...

Grace

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

Sophie Mackintosh

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

14. It comes for me in the middle of the day when I am preparing lunch, quartering a tomato then slicing each segment in...

READ NEXT

Art

December 2016

Bonnie Camplin: Is it a Crime to Love a Prawn

Bonnie Camplin

Art

December 2016

  The title of Bonnie Camplin’s exhibition at 3236RLS Gallery, ‘Is it a Crime to Love a Prawn’, brings...

feature

September 2014

The Mediatisation of Contemporary Writing

Nick Thurston

feature

September 2014

Trying to figure out what marks contemporary literature as contemporary is a deceptively complicated job because the concept of...

poetry

June 2011

Testament: Two Poems

Connie Voisine

poetry

June 2011

Testament What’s the difference? You might wear it out touching, touching, not buying. Like a snail on a stick,...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required