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...

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE PONDERS LOVE   Honey protocols, hear how they mock, snow white and super blue: On the footpaths, we are told, radiators grapple with hydrants and at the marble quarry puss licks her belly until the shag is fluffed Get well cards addressed to third parties The cable car’s driving crank whirrs Here dwells Friedrich Nietzsche On ukulele, recording his propaedeutics in song Huzza, a subcutaneous Alpine ditty Dissimilarity as a religious doctrine The root chord: E minor Robert Walser says Friedrich Nietzsche was not Huh? What? What was I not? You were not loved Hence your resentment The vengeful perfidy of one unloved Meanwhile, new arrivals tuck in to hearty snacks Sausage Berries Poire Williams and Gentian Friedrich Nietzsche and the mild master of remorse converse on stacking chairs Are they onions? Are those contacts – or blows with the fan? Is it a hand-forged bark spud, swathed in camellia oil? We don’t know They speak quietly The mountains’ endless murmur Friedrich Nietzsche ponders love Robert Walser smiles in silence     THE ARBITER’S SICK   Honey protocols, hear how they mock I’m still asleep, they’re fighting already My assistants are whacking each other with hangers and brushes Oh boy, the arbiter’s sick today I see how they batter their limbs, whose workforce is mine, in order, thus squandered, to own themselves at long last Or so the assistants think How wrong they are! Whizz bang, the ankle joint, the nose bone Cat’s tongue, mop and deerfoot OMG Who’ll sew this for me? Who’ll stitch it up? Who’ll fetch and bring back, who’ll support, who’ll transcribe? What do mops and moping have to do with each other? Check it for me! Enough of the fisticuffs! When do we go to print? Assistants, get to work! The theme is: The arbiter’s sick today Let’s go! Mixed dactyls, skipping rhythms, inner universe of middle rhyme Bear me forth and write it all down Realise me in places where I cannot set foot And, while conciliation soon prevails, it’s still lying there, the cuddly toy of my tattooed assistant, who always was my favourite Ah! I’ll never sack a single one     TRANSLATION   Honey protocols, hear how they mock, you translated yourself – didn’t you? – into everything You translated your chemisettes, your crumbs, right on into The Great Glory, where they vanished instead

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

Interview

February 2011

Interview with David Vann

Marissa Cox

Interview

February 2011

I am a little apprehensive about meeting David Vann for the first time. His father committed suicide when David...

poetry

January 2014

Tuesday Will Be War

Jáchym Topol

TR. Alex Zucker

poetry

January 2014

Jáchym Topol (b. 1962), like most Czech authors of his generation, wrote poetry for years before turning to prose....

Art

March 2016

Seeing from behind: Park McArthur

Anna Gritz

Art

March 2016

In a public conversation between Park McArthur and Isla Leaver Yap that accompanied the former’s exhibition Poly at the...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required