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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,...

 ‘So I turned around for an instant to look at what my field of vision onto the sea had not offered up: the heavy grey mass where traces of planks lined up along the inclined ramp like a tiny staircase I got up and decided to have a look around this fortification as if I had seen it for the first time, with its embrasure flush with the sand, behind the protective screen, looking out onto the Breton port, aiming today at inoffensive bathers, its rear defence with a staggered entrance and its dark interior in the blinding light of the gun’s opening toward the sea’ – Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology   It is October 2010 and I am in the kitchen of an old house in Sussex From the kitchen, a door leads to the hallway Suddenly the door begins to sway from side to side At first, I think nothing of it and put it down to a breeze from another room But then the swaying became more deliberate, as if a presence were trying to communicate from afar The door moves to one end, pauses for a second, and then proceeds to return to the other side To and fro it moves, until suddenly, and without warning, it stops As I stand to investigate, an iridescent light fills the hallway, and a tall silhouette clad in black slowly crosses the landing before disappearing into the brick wall In response, the skin on my body becomes clammy with anxiety, while the hairs beginning at the base of my head and extending to the lower reach of my neck recoil, as if they had grasped some kind of horror that I was still in the process of experiencing One minute later, I am on the street Disturbed by the vision, I look at the house from the vantage point of the outside If the figure has come to me in a moment of private intimacy, then I am sure it would not follow me down the stairs and onto the other side of the street, and thereby expose

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,...

READ NEXT

poetry

September 2011

Sleepwalking through the Mekong

Michael Earl Craig

poetry

September 2011

I have my hands out in front of me. I’m lightly patting down everything I come across. I somehow...

fiction

November 2012

Religion and the Movies

Aidan Cottrell Boyce

fiction

November 2012

When the Roman Empire ruled the world, you could make it work for you. The women, the hospitality. You...

poetry

February 2012

Giant Impact Hypothesis

James Midgley

poetry

February 2012

I bought a satellite’s eye from the market. To look through it involved the whole god-orbit, a cotton-wooled Faberge...

 

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