Blameless
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The Conveyor Belt
Louise Stern
‘Tall men that looked like insects crept out of cracks in the stones.’
The Fencing Master
David Treuer
David Treuer on learning to fence with Maître Michel Sebastiani and learning to write with Toni Morrison.
Introduction: No Man’s Land
Sigrid Rausing
‘We tangle and project, in exile; we make it up as we go along.’
from White Butterflies of Night
Jaan Kaplinski
‘I don’t remember whether I believed that I could just / abandon one life to begin another’
Propagandalands
Peter Pomerantsev
From 2016: Peter Pomerantsev reports from Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Friday Afternoon with Boko Haram
Eliza Griswold
I spent the Hezbollah war in Nigeria eating hummus in a Syrian cafe and watching...
Base Life
George Makana Clark
‘This is why he will survive this war to return to his wife and daughter, barring a blind bullet, an errant piece of shrapnel, some careless act of destiny.’
Kobane: The Aftermath
Lorenzo Meloni & Claire Messud
‘If black is the colour of the Islamic State, then grey is the colour of destruction.’
The Ferryman
Azam Ahmed
‘I do not do this work for the government, or the Taliban, or even the men who I collect from the battlefield and return to their loved ones. All these years I have done this for God.’
Eight pieces in imitation of Thomas A. Clark
Matthew Welton
‘what it is about the earth / that it won’t absorb the stream’
Bucharest, Broken City
Philip Ó Ceallaigh
‘It is only consciousness and memory that hold together the things we sometimes see as solid.’
Reading Comprehension: Text No. 2
Alejandro Zambra
‘Which of the following famous phrases best reflects the meaning of the text?’
Last Day on Earth
Eric Puchner
‘Despite my efforts at denial the new reality of our lives was beginning to sink in.’
New Tarzon Guided Bomb Hits Bull’s-Eye!
Don Mee Choi
‘Watch this performance carefully, for you are witnessing a new concept of modern warfare.’
Coventry
Rachel Cusk
‘War is a narrative: it might almost be said to embody the narrative principle itself.’
Fairbourne
Adam Weymouth
‘Climate change, I realise, is already here. Not the drama of it, not yet, but in the mundane.’
The Secret Afterlife of Boats
Anna Badkhen
‘The sea is broken,’ they say. An empty net at night: a drooping lattice of shiny nothingness, a cold and worthless tinsel mesh.
Spirit Animals
Darrell Hartman
From The Revenant through Jurassic Park and Godzilla, Darrell Hartman traces the evolving meaning of megafauna in popular culture.
Matthew Green and Bryan Doerries
Matthew Green & Bryan Doerries
Matthew Green and Bryan Doerries discuss Greek tragedy, post-traumatic stress disorder and the cathartic power of drama.
Dynamics in the Storm
Greg Jackson
‘You only have time to live your own life, and mine was falling apart.’
Five Things Right Now: Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
The Disappearing
Fatima Bhutto
‘I have gone to the forest to lie among the moss and sleep under a canopy of trees. I have gone to the forest to root among the soil and listen to the birds.’
Then
Mark Slouka
‘It was in January, I think. That weekend, more than any other, the thought of her leaving seemed impossible.’
The Fruit of My Woman
Han Kang
‘It was late May when I first saw the bruises on my wife’s body.’
Fiction by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith.
Click
Brian Evenson
‘It wasn’t that he didn’t have a name, only that he was having difficulty locating it.’
Two Poems
Noelle Kocot
‘the problematic / Ocean spreads itself out. We take it in stride, / And we do our best.’
