‘The fight for a space to know oneself better What sort of a space is this?’ In a new essay published this month Scott Esposito explores the relationship between writing and self-understanding, searching ‘along the border separating real and fake, invented and recorded’ ‘The Last Redoubt’ measures Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s docufiction Close-Up against the plasticity of self-identity, and the politics of a ‘second self’   Also in the November online issue is our interview with Spanish émigré writer Juan Goytisolo, whose politically-charged novels were banned by Franco; a conversation between writer-artist Louise Stern and theatre director Omar Elerian re-composed as imagistic, textual collage (see above image); Paul Currion traverses both sides of military spectacle at the start of the Iraq War; new stories by Jeremy Chambers and Bethan Roberts; and newly translated poems from two-time Premio Nacional de Poesía winner Pere Gimferrer