John Berger's essay begins by describing the experience of burying a year's worth of his household's excrement. What follows is an extended reflection--at once philosophically detached and profoundly engaged with the inescapable stuff of life--on shit as an emblem of what it means to be human: on our simultaneous kinship with and profound difference from all other animals.

Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.