Photo by Aldo Bonata
Reading Kadare, David Bellos finds the whole world in literary form: a masterful blend of myth and folklore with portraits of modern minds and local realities—plus a…
Essays
Adam Jones from Kelowna / Wikimedia Commons As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world—Kadare’s no…
J. M. W. Turner, Ancient Italy—Ovid Banished from Rome, oil on canvas, 1838 / Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, Dav…
Bobby Sands mural on gable wall of Sinn Fein offices on Falls Road, Belfast./ Photo by Shermozle / Wikimedia What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whethe…
Photo: José Arturo Ballester Panelli The state of emergency is the exception, the overturned routine, the searing pause, the lost tranquility. You might think that it is just a readjustment o…
Photo: Luis G. Collao When police are blinding protestors on Chile’s streets, eyes like poet Elvira Hernández’s become more important than ever. As I write this, Chile is burning. T…
Illustration: Jen Rickard Blair Scuba-diving in the Black Sea, a writer contemplates Lenin in the Crimean seabed, the watery landfall from which historical figures are never meant to rise…
photo: Cristian / Flickr A writer traces how the murder of George Floyd is continuing to arouse people in cities everywhere, including her own mother in Martinique. Sa ki…
Photo: Quarantine portrait. Tulsa, Oklahoma. March 22, 2020, by Joseph Rushmore A writer of historical fiction, located in the US heartland, considers the pandemic’s languid cree…
Sunset in Queens, New York, May 5, 2020. Photo: Jay Santiago / Flickr In isolation, a writer connects her mother’s attempt to protect her from “never-being-able-to-leave-Cuba-itis” to her…
The Greek government announced plans to reopen the vital tourism sector as the country is likely to suffer the worst recession in the European Union this year. Photo: Gianni Skaragas…
Honeycomb Photo: Shilo Labelle / Unsplash, bee photo: Ante Hamersmit / Unsplash, Spoon photo: Jen Blair In quarantine in South Beach, Miami, a writer looks to literature—and bees—wh…
An Iranian detainee hangs up her laundry on the fence at the Construction camp detention center used for younger men and women and children. February 26, 2012, on Christmas Island, Australia.…
Photo: Quinn Makabe played by Thapelo Mokoena in the TV drama of Trackers by Deon Meyer Encountering postapartheid Afrikaans fiction for the first time, particularly the fa…
Photo: Rene Böhmer / Unsplash A polyhedron of blond leather. Thirty-two by seventeen by twelve. Solid handle, brass hooks, wide belt, reinforced external corners, hand-sewn. Inside, top, a st…
Left to right: Ayobami Adebayo, Chigozie Obioma, and Romeo Oriogun Three millennial writers probe inner male conflict while the patriarch Achebe looks on. A man lays his he…
Relief at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Photo: Clare_and_ben / flickr Standing before a museum exhibit of a mummified five-year-old “Purchased in Egypt in 1895,” a…
After watching the world-premiere dance adaptations of her poems from The Surrender Tree, Engle delivered the following keynote to the packed audience in attendance, which included seve…
Photo: Shevaun Williams Lilliam Rivera served on the jury that chose the 2019 NSK Prize winner and successfully championed Margarita Engle as her nominee. On the first day of the 2019 Neu…
A monument to poet Adam Mickiewicz. Photo: Jutta M. Jenning / Flickr A couple finds their hired tour guide more sage for hire—like Socrates, an ambulatory pedagogue. I saw him first…
A woman runs with a purple smoke bomb during a protest against sexual abuse of women on August 16, 2019, in Mexico City. Photo: Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images Though the feminist…
ARShAT performing a Transforma. Photo: Ruslan Yakupov Traveling across central Asia, Nicholas Pritchard discovers musical acts of dissent in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Our problems have no…
Basque poet and bertsolari winner Maialen Lujanbio during the 2017 Bertsolari Grand Championship. Photo: Dani Blanco / Wikimedia In Basque and other minority-language tradit…
Széchenyi Chain Bridge, Budapest, Hungary. Photo: Daniel Olah / Unsplash Sometime in the mid-1980s, at the first conference of the European Association of American Studies held behind the Iro…
Kaninekahake – People of the Flint, fabric collage with acrylic on board, by Alex Jacobs, 2006, private collection, Santa Fe, NM. Image courtesy of Alex Jacobs There is a field…
December 17, 2025
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