On Bullfighting

Written & narrated by AL Kennedy

Length

5h

On Bullfighting begins with a shocking scene that appears to have little to do with bullfighting – but one that is about life and death, their entanglements, their various attractions. It is also about writing, and Kennedy’s sense that she can no longer do it. From this beginning Kennedy sets out to understand bullfighting because, struggling with being unable to write, she is ‘looking for faith’ and bullfighting is ‘both an exorcism and an act of faith’. She finds a world that is ‘complicated, repellent, fascinating, grotesque, sacramental, ugly, ritualistic, haphazard, sacred and blasphemous’. First published in 1999 it was and remains astonishing writing.