São Paulo, after dark.

São Paulo is the largest city in the southern hemisphere, and also one of the least theorised by the kind of cultural index that tends to organise itself around a handful of European cities and their Asian counterparts. This issue tried to take that absence seriously — not as a gap to be filled efficiently but as a fact with its own weight.

Clarice Lispector is the obvious anchor: The Hour of the Star places the city and the question of who gets to be seen at the same moment, in the same sentence. Cortázar provides the structural argument. The Boom provides the context — and its limits. Sophia Velez edited from São Paulo with field notes accumulated over four weeks.