Best Book of 1998: Symbiotic Planet
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War and Virus
Vesna Maric
‘Wars, national disasters and pandemics do not cause social disintegration – they reveal it, and deepen it.’
Vesna Maric on the difference between wars and viruses.
The Pandemic, Our Common Story
Anna Badkhen
Anna Badkhen was researching Eden – the origins of humanity in the Afar Triangle of East Africa – when coronavirus broke out across the world.
In Conversation
Kathryn Scanlan & Kate Zambreno
‘When a day is not structured by appointments, meetings, driving to work, taking lunch, driving home, shopping (i.e. capitalism), its soft, loose (wild?) shapelessness becomes apparent.’
Exciting Times
Naoise Dolan
‘There was something Shakespearean about imperious men going down on you: the mighty have fallen.’
Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.
In Conversation
Jenny Offill & Mark O'Connell
‘This isn’t the end of the world. It’s history going about its business. This isn’t the last apocalypse by a long shot.’
Jenny Offill, author of Weather, talks to Mark O’Connell, author of Notes from the Apocalypse.
Three Poems
Hannah Regel
‘It makes no difference / If the devil has been defeated or if it is your character’
The Shrouds on the Glacier du Rhône
Simon Norfolk & Klaus Thymann & Francis Hodgson
Photographs of the Rhône Glacier by Simon Norfolk and Klaus Thymann, with an introduction by Francis Hodgson.
Più Vivo
Diane Williams
‘You’ve seen I’m sure a performer on stage stock-still – during which time he waits for his ovation. This is how I am these days.’
New fiction from Diane Williams.
The Lessons We Choose
Beth Gardiner
This will not be the last crisis. What can we learn from this one?
Plague Diary: March
Gonçalo M. Tavares
A coronavirus diary from the Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares, translated by Daniel Hahn.
Farm Tennis
Rob Magnuson Smith
‘Nobody bothered him when he was playing tennis. No matter how long he stayed out there, the door never took breaks.’
Fiction by Rob Magnuson Smith.
Interview
Jon Fosse
‘To me writing is a kind of listening. I don’t know what I am listening to, but I am listening!’
Some Rivers Meet
James Clarke
‘What a thing it must be to lose your marbles on your own, with not even enough milk in the fridge for a proper brew.’
Fiction by James Clarke.
In Conversation
Morgan Parker & Rachel Long
‘Everyone should be thinking about how they do their thing specifically, how they can use their influences combined with their own language, music and experience.’
City of Pigs
David Hayden
‘I have heard there is a city of pigs thirty miles from our city. I imagine it is only a farm. I cannot imagine a city of pigs.’
New fiction by David Hayden.
Mama’s Last Hug
Frans de Waal
‘Watching behaviour comes naturally to me, so much so that I may be overdoing it.’
Line A—B
Mark Blacklock
‘Never was a man so deep in thought.’
An extract from Mark Blacklock’s new novel.
The Medical Detective
Sandra Hempel
An extract from Sandra Hempel’s The Medical Detective, which follows the story of the man who identified – and helped stop – the cholera pandemic of the 1830s.
Lost Children Archive
Valeria Luiselli
An extract from Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, nominated for the Rathbones Folio Prize.
From the Spanish Flu to Covid-19
Reina James
Reina James compares our response to Covid-19 to the reaction to the Spanish Flu in 1918.
Interview
Teju Cole
‘What is this elsewhere that one is longing to be in? Part of the answer to this question, for me, is Switzerland.’
The Knowledge
Barclay Bram
Barclay Bram on the infamous London black cab exam, and how communal knowledge is changing.
Solo
Ingrid Persaud
‘I wanted her to see me as a real man, with a little swagger, cool as this fall evening.’
An excerpt from Ingrid Persaud’s Love After Love.
