Chloe Aridjis

‘We are many different people: to believe we are only one is a mistake.’ So mused Leonora Carrington to Chloe Aridjis one day in her kitchen in Mexico – a land beloved by both for its ‘sense of the marvellous in the everyday’. Given her friend’s dictum, the novelist’s gift of a peacock oilcloth was oddly perfect, as she reflects in the November 2023 issue. ‘I like the idea of those feathered eyes accompanying her gaze as people came and went.’