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Jonathan Gibbs

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or the Painted Grape (Galley Beggar Press).



Articles Available Online


Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Sight’

Book Review

February 2018

Jonathan Gibbs

Book Review

February 2018

Jessie Greengrass’s debut story collection caught my eye with its delightfully extravagant title, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to...

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May 2016

Cinema on the Page

Jonathan Gibbs

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May 2016

Film is a bully. It wants to make its viewers feel, and it has the tools to do so....

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

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or...

The Story I'm Thinking Of

fiction

April 2013

Jonathan Gibbs

fiction

April 2013

There were seven of us sat around the table. Seven grown adults, sat around the table. It was late. We had eaten, and we had...

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Art

February 2013

Haitian Art and National Tragedy

Rob Sharp

Art

February 2013

Thousands of Haiti’s poorest call it home: Grand Rue, a district of Port-au-Prince once run by merchants and bankers,...

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Issue No. 10

Editorial

The Editors

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Issue No. 10

This tenth editorial will be our last. Back in February 2011, on launching the magazine, we grandiosely stated that we...

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September 2015

Immigrant Freedoms

Benjamin Markovits

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September 2015

My grandmother, known to us all as Mutti, caught one of the last trains out of Gotenhafen before the...

 

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