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Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage). Her previous book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (Chatto/FSG) was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her essays have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Frieze, among others. Her next book, Art Monsters, will be out in July 2023 (Chatto/FSG). She lives in London.

Articles Available Online


Maria Gainza’s ‘Optic Nerve’

Book Review

May 2019

Lauren Elkin

Book Review

May 2019

In his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus, on the pleasures of philosophy, and of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in particular, Brian Massumi writes:  ...

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Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

I’m a woman who’s been through terrible trauma I’m a woman whose first husband committed suicide, and whose second husband woke up out of a dead sleep, murdered her son, then killed himself   Kamal woke up, killed Mahmoud, and threw himself off the balcony   Kamal woke up, killed Mahmoud, and threw himself off the balcony Right from the start, from the beginning of the beginning, I never blamed Kamal for killing Mahmoud Kamal is forgiven: he had a whore for a mother and a bastard for a son, and it’s at those two, bastard and whore, that the fingers of blame should be pointed Not at Kamal, who was a victim the same way that I was a victim, and more so The whore mother I’d already killed, but the bastard son, who’d played the lead in Mahmoud’s death, what were we going to do about him?   Justice is that the killer dies, right? That’s what I know That’s what everybody knows, though they might deny it   Hours I spent on Facebook, hunting for Haytham Kamal, trying every play on the name I could think of, until I found him, and sent him a Friend request Then nights, scrolling down his wall I wanted to know what he was doing, where he went Where I could find him, so I could kill him, so I could make the world more beautiful, if only for a while Okay, I was telling myself, I’ll kill him, and I’ll turn myself in to the police, and I’ll go to prison   But as I was hunting Haytham on Facebook, I was also searching on Google, looking up Qanater Prison I wanted to be fully prepared I packed a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush Wasn’t leaving anything to chance   When they took me to prison – when I took myself to prison – I wanted to be ready   I’m a woman who’s taken what people aren’t made to take So what do I do? Die? Can you do that? Suffer all that trauma and just make up your mind to lie down and die? Well, yes, of course you can, but what I’m saying is: that’s not

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK...

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

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Issue No. 2

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed and there was a surly-looking...

READ NEXT

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December 2016

Wildness of the Day

Orlando Reade

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December 2016

One day in late 2011, waiting outside Green Park station, my gaze was drawn to an unexpected sight. Earlier...

fiction

November 2014

The Ovenbird

César Aira

TR. Chris Andrews

fiction

November 2014

The hypothesis underlying this study is that human beings act in strict accordance with an instinctive programme, which governs...

Interview

October 2014

Interview with Vanessa Place

Kyoo Lee

Jacob Bromberg

Interview

October 2014

Vanessa Place is widely considered to be one of the figureheads of contemporary conceptual poetry, yet while books such...

 

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