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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,...

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

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

feature

October 2011

The New Global Literature? Marjane Satrapi and the Depiction of Conflict in Comics

Jessica Copley

feature

October 2011

Over the last ten years graphic novels have undergone a transformation in the collective literary consciousness. Readers, editors and...

feature

Issue No. 14

In Search of the Dice Man

Emmanuel Carrère

TR. Will Heyward

feature

Issue No. 14

Towards the end of the 1960s, Luke Rhinehart was practicing psychoanalysis in New York, and was sick and tired...

poetry

June 2017

Austrian Murder Case

Phoebe Power

poetry

June 2017

At the Konditorei   Close, warm, and humming with the relaxed sounds of post- midday Kaffee-Kuchen. The  cakes are...

 

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