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Amber Husain

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, The Believer, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. She is the author of Replace Me, to be published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.



Articles Available Online


Slouching Towards Death

Book Review

July 2021

Amber Husain

Book Review

July 2021

In January, a preview excerpt in The New Yorker of Rachel Kushner’s essay collection The Hard Crowd (2021) warned us that this might turn...

Book Review

August 2020

Natasha Stagg’s ‘Sleeveless’

Amber Husain

Book Review

August 2020

‘The thong is centimetres closer to areas of arousal,’ writes Natasha Stagg in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York,...

The following text is the condensed result of over ninety hours of dialogue with Ricardo Melogno, recorded between November 2014 and December 2015 The conversations were much longer and more disparate, and the topics were covered with less continuity and greater chaos than in the current text My edits respect the words of the interviewee while compressing, grouping and organising them chronologically and thematically, with the goal of providing structure to his story I believe I have respected the concepts expounded by Ricardo, but I take full responsibility for any differences or mistakes arising from the editing process C B   TURNING TOWARDS THE DARKNESS   ‘I was told that someone saw you levitate’   [Melogno furrows his brow, smiles with amusement]   ‘Who?’   ‘Someone who knew you from Unit 20 and was convicted again They brought him here and when he saw you, he asked to be kept as far away from you as possible He said that you were evil, and that he had seen you levitate’   ‘Oh, I know who that is, ha ha Well, you see, that kid’s real impressionable Among other major issues he has   Here’s the thing with me Inside the prison, things pass from mouth to mouth and they start adding up Over the years it’s sort of snowballed Even now, when they send in the search parties (they’re not guards from here, but from the ‘regular’ prison, and they come every two or three months) they find the shrine in my cell with all the offerings and the candles, they say: ‘Old man, what are you into here? What’s all this strange stuff?’ But these guys are more modern these days, they ask more out of curiosity, not out of fear   [On his left arm he has a tattoo with three symbols on top of each other: at the top is a 666, in the middle an inverted crucifix and on the bottom a reversed swastika The line of symbols is flanked by two snakes writhing rampantly from left to right]   ‘Why the reversed swastika?’   ‘The regular swastika, the one used by the Nazis, represents turning towards the sun, towards the light So I got mine

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall,...

On Having No Skin: Nan Goldin’s Sirens

Art Review

January 2020

Amber Husain

Art Review

January 2020

The feeling of drug-induced euphoria could be strips of gauze between beautiful fingers. Or a silver slinky sent down a torso by its own...
In Defence of Dead Women

Essay

November 2018

Amber Husain

Essay

November 2018

The memorial for the artist was as inconclusive as her work, or anybody’s life. Organised haphazardly on Facebook by one of her old friends,...

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Interview

March 2017

Interview with Ondjaki

Stephen Henighan

Interview

March 2017

Ondjaki is the most prominent African writer of Portuguese from the generations born after Portugal’s five former colonies on...

fiction

June 2013

What We Did After We Lost 100 Years' Wealth in 24 Months

Agri Ismaïl

fiction

June 2013

‘World finance had, in 2008, a near-death experience.’   The words belong to a partner of a renowned international...

poetry

October 2013

Transylvania

Jon Stone

poetry

October 2013

The rabbit darkness just beyond the headlights’ sprawl and parcel darkness stopping up the drivers’ mouths like oaths or...

 

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