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Aaron Peck
Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Articles Available Online


The Abyss Echoes Back: Judith Schalansky’s ‘An Inventory of Losses’

Book Review

January 2021

Aaron Peck

Book Review

January 2021

Early in Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses, the narrator describes the way an ancient form of writing survived oblivion. The soft clay tablets...

Book Review

May 2018

Harry Mathews’s ‘The Solitary Twin’

Aaron Peck

Book Review

May 2018

Imagine a small fishing village on the edge of the world. Its inhabitants are progressive and content. The surroundings...

Dear Mr Chairman,   Sir,   Yesterday, after I switched on the spotlight so that you could see the Queen properly, you covered your nose so I wanted to explain why there’s a smell   Please, allow me to introduce my good self to you I’m Benazir Mirza (also known as Aspro), and for ten years now, I’ve been working as guard and caretaker in the basement of our prestigious Lahore Museum But more than that, I’m a devoted sevadari to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria   Sir, I want to tell you everything – how after Partition the Queen was dragged from Charing Cross Road, where she’d sat under the shade of a marble pavilion since 1904, and dumped here in the basement However, I don’t want to lie and pretend that I haven’t been watching you for many years I see you every morning when I’m taking my tea break at 1130 am at Khalid’s kiosk and you drive through the gates of the Museum You sit at the back, on the left, with your window rolled up I even know your number plate   ‘There goes my boss’s boss in his big car,’ I tell Khalid, and raise my cup to your black Mercedes Khalid doesn’t bother to look but tells me the same thing every day, ‘What difference does it make to you? Nothing Are you ever going to ride in that car and go to Chaman for a badam pista ice cream? Never’   He also comments on how you keep coming and going ‘Your boss’s boss doesn’t do anything except show off’ I told him an important person like you had many meetings to attend at fancy places like the PC Hotel   ‘PC my foot; why are you defending him?’ he said ‘He isn’t your husband’   Now I’ll speak openly Sir, I’ve often wondered, what if I was married to you, then what? I imagine turning the handle on the door of your polished car and the cool blast from its air-conditioned interior welcoming me, but then my mind goes blank and I get stuck thinking about what next   But I’m getting sidetracked; I don’t want you to have

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Gloria

fiction

May 2017

Aaron Peck

fiction

May 2017

Bernard, whenever he thought of Geoffrey, would remember his gait on the afternoon of their first meeting. Geoffrey walked with the confidence of a...

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fiction

Issue No. 19

Once Sublime

Virginie Despentes

TR. Frank Wynne

fiction

Issue No. 19

The music is sick! This guy’s a genius. Always trust Gaëlle. When they first saw him, everyone thought who...

feature

June 2014

A Grenade for River Plate

Juan Pablo Meneses

TR. Jethro Soutar

feature

June 2014

El Polaco appears brandishing his Stanley, as he lovingly calls his pocket knife. Five young hooligans huddle round him...

feature

May 2011

Short Cuts

Charles Boyle

feature

May 2011

1.. Whatever it is that the literature department of Arts Council England (ACE) is for, it can’t be for...

 

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