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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...

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

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...

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fiction

April 2014

Spins

Eley Williams

fiction

April 2014

Spider n. (Skinner thinks this word softened from spinder or spinner, from spin; Junius, with his usual felicity, dreams...

poetry

January 2016

Three Honey Protocols

Monika Rinck

TR. Nicholas Grindell

poetry

January 2016

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE PONDERS LOVE   Honey protocols, hear how they mock, snow white and super blue: On the footpaths,...

fiction

March 2015

Wedding Watcher

Helle Helle

TR. Martin Aitken

fiction

March 2015

I strayed into the church on an impulse. It was a mistake to get off the bus in the...

 

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