The Secular World
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Anjan Sundaram and Lindsey Hilsum In Conversation
Lindsey Hilsum & Anjan Sundaram
‘Sometimes we don’t quite know what we’re seeing.’
Anjali Joseph | First Sentence
Anjali Joseph
‘I kept returning to the Beckett stories, a favourite since I came upon them in my late teens.’
The Fixer
Snigdha Poonam
‘In Indian media and advertising, young people are mainly being projected as vessels of breathless aspiration.’
Three Prose Poems
Sharmistha Mohanty
‘And the evening wind from over the sea makes that threadbare self billow like a tattered sail, all that resisted it now become the air on which it rises.’
Five Things Right Now: Kelly Link
Kelly Link
Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble shares five links to what she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
Honk Honk to Udvada
Chandrahas Choudhury
‘Oh Uncle, it’s such a historical day,’ said Zahra. ‘The eight hundredth anniversary of our arrival in India after we faced so much persecution in Iran, and we’re going to such a big bash, and all you can think about is emus. What will Dr Billimoria think of our family?’
Cairo: September 2014
Wiam El-Tamami
‘Over the past few months, the government has been ad-libbing the time.’
The Foreign Correspondent
Pallavi Aiyar
‘The absence of Indian foreign correspondents was, and is, unexceptional.’
Performance Art
Manjula Padmanabhan
‘A single pod of cardamom! Was that enough? To flavour an entire life’s pot of time?’
To Recall, To Praise
Spencer Reece
‘What would follow for five years was one of my last relationships forged through letters.’
Song
Silvina Ocampo
‘Oh, nothing, nothing is mine. / I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake / or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue / well when it has rained.’
Barbara Ras and Matthew Dickman In Conversation
Matthew Dickman & Barbara Ras
‘They happen organically. If a can of Pepsi shows up it’s because I was thinking about a can of Pepsi.’
Fatima Bhutto | My Other Thing
Fatima Bhutto
‘If you happen to be friends with one of the world’s most fearsome food critics, don’t cook for him.’
Five Things Right Now: Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado, author of ‘The Husband Stitch’, shares five links to what she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
My Chess Teacher
Ricardo Lísias
‘The environment, however, wasn’t a hostile one. Though it was filled with the strangest guys in town, they were only there to play.’
Terror
Kimiko Hahn
‘The lemon shark / who returns to the same mangrove-lined shallows / every year to give birth.’
Five Things Right Now: John Darnielle
John Darnielle
John Darnielle, author of the debut novel Wolf in White Van, shares five links of what he’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
S.J. Naudé and Ivan Vladislavić In Conversation
S.J. Naudé & Ivan Vladislavić
‘In rapidly transforming societies, writers may lose the space they’ve built their imaginative lives around.’
Orion’s Belt
Cristhiano Aguiar
‘Well, if the Bible, Greek tragedies and Star Wars have taught me something it’s that anything of great importance will eventually come in threes.’
Biographical Detail
Ángel González Muñiz
‘The cockroaches in my house complain because I read at night’.
When Did I Become a Writer?
Mia Couto
‘I am often asked when I became a writer, and I have taken to not rushing my answer.’
The Abyss
Rafael Frumkin
‘I came home this past fall to the Chicago suburb where I’d lived with my parents from age nine until I left for college in 2008, and I moved back into my childhood bedroom.’
Red Space: Promoting a Socialist Destiny
Justin Jampol
Space posters were ‘visually stunning representations of the promises of the Soviet state’.
The Chronicle of the Wrinkled-Face Sheikh
Salman Natour
‘No other inanimate object retains emotion as strongly as keys do. Fingerprints are engraved on them as if the laws of wear and tear do not apply.’
Nawzat Shamdin | Interview
Nawzat Shamdin & Larry Siems
‘I remain what I have always been, a human being first, and then an Iraqi. And then I am a writer.’
Data Recovery
Diego Collado
‘The viewer has to pour their own unconscious into interpreting these images, make them their own, allow themselves to be encouraged by the existence of a void.’
Introduction: Fate
Sigrid Rausing
The last time I wrote about fate was in an article for the Guardian on...
Domain
Louise Erdrich
‘Seven corporations control the afterlife now, and many people spend their lives amassing the money to upload into the best.’
Origin Myth
Mary Ruefle
‘Life continually circled in cold inaccessible serenity around unhappy Earth’
Key Stroke
Will Self
Striking the keys of the same typewriter that once sat under J.G. Ballard’s fingers, Will Self reimagines the legendary writer’s last days.
How to Get Over Someone You Love
Adam Fitzgerald
‘Would you like to come with me for some / old-fashioned inconclusive combat?’
Self-Made Man
Mark Gevisser
Mark Gevisser examines the personal, political and social issues of transgender identity in America.
