The Shadow of the Object is a magnificent work of shadow-play and a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and mortality
Chloe Aridjis
Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican-British novelist and writer
Aridjis is the author of Book of Clouds, which won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France, Asunder, and Sea Monsters, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, as well as the collection Dialogue with a Somnambulist; Stories, Essays, and a Portrait Gallery. She writes for various art journals and was a guest curator at Tate Liverpool. In 2014, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in London.
The Shadow of the Object was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.
Chloe Aridjis on The Shadow of the Object
‘I was inspired by an obsession with magic lanterns and other early optical instruments. Visits to Magic Lantern Society conventions, where I observed the individuals who attended and tried to imagine their lives. And Aby Warburg, the brilliant, extravagant art historian from Hamburg who a century ago had his own very tactile, dynamic way of handling images. With our present so overrun by technology and the virtual, these vanished worlds were increasingly appealing.’
Read the full interview here.
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A magnificent work of shadow-play and a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and mortality
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