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February 15, 2023
Shiny Objects | The Koh-i-noor, Rishi Sunak, and the Aesthetics of Anticolonialism
Pranay Somayajula
It’s unclear who, exactly, was the first person to refer to India as the “jewel in the crown of the British Empire.” The phrase has been commonly attributed — perhaps apocryphally — to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who proclaimed Queen Victoria Empress of India in 1877. It was popularized by British novelist Paul Scott, who in 1966 used it as the title of the first book in his Raj...
February 14, 2023
New History | Poetry
Jessica Laser
Maybe the worst thing about American Puritanism is the position it forces its opponents into. — Robert Hass 1. Jimmy, when we say sorry, is it I love you in disguise? Everyone does it, marries the Stranger, taboo to do it otherwise. When we say we don’t Understand, is it I could put my faith in you, Someone I don’t really know? Compared to us He was a Rabbi. One...
February 7, 2023
After the Fatwa | Losing Faith in Salman Rushdie
Zain Khalid
Following the vicious attack on Salman Rushdie last August in Chautauqua, New York, following the news that the writer had been stabbed at least ten times and lost the use of a hand and sight in one eye, following the requisite denunciations of his assailant, there began a hagiography. In The Atlantic, Bernard-Henri Lévy lauded “The Immortal Salman Rushdie.” The New Yorker’s David Remnick argued that Rushdie should win the...
November 1, 2022
Tiny Beasts | Fiction
Ayla Zuraw-Friedland
Global warming was fucking up the squirrels. It was of course fucking everything up — the new and improved Boston Seaport would be underwater in twenty years, and the mosquitos were leaving particularly nasty welts. But special attention was on the squirrels. Higher-than-usual temperatures were fermenting the berries they ate off the trees and getting them so drunk they lost their sense of balance. They dented the roofs of cars...
November 1, 2022
Three Poems | Poetry
Natalie Shapero
Play In Often I have been told I should be in movies, not because I am glamorous or anything like that, but because my expressions are at times borderline imperceptible; seeing me from a regular distance, people can’t tell how I feel. So really what they’re recommending is enlargement, the ability to be transmitted to others by close-up. Isn’t there a way to get this accomplished without becoming an actor?...
November 1, 2022
But What I Really Want to Do Is Write! | The Year of the Auteur Novel
Hanson O’Haver
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion wrote. She also wrote, with her husband, more than twenty screenplays in order to make money. The couple was hardly alone: from the early days of Hollywood, literary figures like Graham Greene, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Brecht took a swing at the pictures. More recent efforts have come from Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, and...
November 1, 2022
A Dispatch from China
Charlene Wang
From mid-June through the end of August, China experienced its worst heat wave in more than 60 years. Hardly anyone was invulnerable: even while working indoors, several of my friends, all in their twenties, experienced heat stroke. On social media, other effects were on display, from eggs boiling on car dashboards and shrimp cooking in the outdoor heat to wildfires in Chongqing and severe drought across southern cities. In August,...
November 1, 2022
A Dispatch from France
Annie Crabill
When school children in Lyon, France, returned to classes this fall, they had a critical decision to make: are they a vegetarian Jeune Pousse, or an omnivorous Petit Bouchon? According to a sample menu, the former, which translates to “Young Sprout,” will enjoy a tandoori-spiced stew with chickpeas, lentils, and vegetables. The latter, named with a nod to traditional Lyonnais restaurants, will be served veal in a tomato-mushroom sauce. Radishes...
November 1, 2022
A Dispatch from Kenya
April Zhu
In his inauguration speech on September 13, President William Samoei Ruto reaffirmed Kenya’s pledge to transition fully to renewable energy by 2030. The country isn’t far from that goal. Unlike the United States, where only about a fifth of domestic electricity currently comes from solar, geothermal, or wind power, Kenya is already at 92 percent. It hosts the largest solar project in East and Central Africa, as well as the...
November 1, 2022
A Dispatch from the American West
Emma Hager
Back in the stiff heat of August, I sat with family and friends, on the porch of an old lodge in southwestern New Mexico, where we broached our habitual subjects of fire and water in the American West. Since the rains had arrived mid-June, we ceded our reunion plans to the Gila River — whose channels, by then, were too deep for even jacked-up trucks to cross — but decided...
