In 2008, Marcella Beccaria, curator of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, commissioned a solo exhibition by celebrated artist Roberto Cuoghi. Šuillakku – as the show was to be titled – would represent lamentations for the fall of the ancient Assyrian city Nineveh. The pièce de résistance was a sculpture of Pazuzu, a fiendish demon of evil spirits and keeper of frigid winds which were thought to bring blight, famine and pestilence. The Met Museum’s description of Pazuzu offers: ‘He stands on two legs and has human arms ending in claws with two pairs of wings, a scorpion’s tail, a snake-headed erect penis and a horned, bearded head with bulging eyes and snarling canine mouth.’ Cuoghi’s nineteen-foot-tall Pazuzu dominated the third floor above the entrance to the castle in Turin, a towering threat keeping watch over the unwitting visitors. Cuoghi recalls an incident towards the end of the exhibition...

7.35 a.m. Running, not walking. By necessity, not choice. My bones still infused with sleep, wound and bound in layers of ancient T-shirts. Leggings exhausted, puckered at the knees. Puffa jacket oozing feathers as I pant, spliced open that time I drunkenly slid down a pebble-dash wall outside some nightclub. Back when there were nightclubs. The shins on me are screaming with the splints. R. is dressed for work. Black on black on black. Everything declares neat. Mary Poppins boots, double-knotted with precision, at her slender ankles (she has always had ankles like baby trees). In her proximity I am blurry and vague. She blinks at me, X-raying my soul, and her face scrunches into a smile. Suddenly R. is six again, grinning up from a Coco Pops bowl, peering down from a gnarled apple tree, side-eying me from behind a pair of legs – my mother’s, probably. Growing up,...

Eimear McBride is the author of the novels A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (2013), The Lesser Bohemians (2016), Strange Hotel (2020), and, most recently, The City Changes Its Face (2025).  The City Changes Its Face picks up the story two years after McBride’s second novel, The Lesser Bohemians, both set in London in the 1990s. It follows the tempestuous relationship between Eily, a young theatre student, and Stephen, an established actor. The City unspools over the course of a single, turbulent evening, while the narrative is punctuated by flashbacks to recent events. Significant interruptions from the past include a visit from Stephen’s daughter Grace (who is not much younger than Eily), and a dramatic shift as the novel’s style switches to a screenplay of sorts – Eily and Grace watch an autobiographical film Stephen has made about his life, that touches on themes of addiction, abuse, and self-harm. McBride...

Off the northwest coast of Ireland, between the white sands of Trá Bhán and the Atlantic’s roiling waves, there is a rocky islet, approximately 150 metres long and 100 metres wide, marked on Google Maps as Illanamarve. The islet transforms depending on point of observation: from certain parts of the surrounding landscape, it presents as one of the many promontories edging the shore, from other angles, it’s clearly a place distinct. Though visible from most nearby towns, such as Annagry and Carrickfinn, at closer range Illanamarve is intermittently blocked from view by rising topography. Just as you catch sight of it, you lose it again. Composed almost entirely of granite, the island has a shallow covering of soil and grass but is devoid of trees or shrubbery. The route from Trá Bhán to the island – passable only at low tide – changes quickly underfoot from sand to loose rocks...