Now 18 years old and recently rebranded as Revue21, the thick quarterly publication is a major reference point for France’s “mook” (magazine-book) scene, and for French narrative long-form journalism. It specialises in stories that – as its editor, Guillaume Gendron, put it to me – allow the writer to be present in them, acknowledge their own subjectivities and doubts, and in so doing establish a relationship of trust with the reader. Holding the 162-page winter issue in my hands, I feel the effort that went into reporting and drafting these stories. If I’m going to get lost in something, it’s not in one of a hundred open tabs – it’s in the physical pages in front of me.