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evening sitdown
Your evening longread: What happened on a visit to the world's tallest man
It’s a coronavirus-free zone as we bring you an interesting longread each evening to take your mind off the news.
EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.
And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.
We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.
An older longread from 2005, about a visit to the Ukraine to meet the world’s tallest man, Leonid S.
(GQ, approx 30 mins reading time)
“Dobryi den,” he said again. Good day. As if he’d been waiting. He was smiling as he undid the gate, teeth like mah-jongg tiles. He was tall. The top of my head reached only to his elbows. And he was wide. On his own, he was a walking family of four, maybe five. My hand instinctively shot out, and he hesitated, then took it. Hand in hand, mine vanished in his like a small goldfish. He seemed to measure its weight a moment, considered its smallness, then squeezed. Yes, ouch—without realizing it, trying to be gentle—very hard! His palm was too wide to clasp fingers around. Meanwhile, he was crushing certain fine bones I didn’t realize I had.
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