Postcard for One City One Book Hong Kong 2020, which featured Xi Xi’s My City
The Shanghai-born Hong Kong writer Xi Xi (b. 1937) was the 2019 winner of the Newman Prize for Chinese…
Essay
August 17, 2021
July 29, 2021Photo by Jason Kocheran / Unsplash A left-behind daughter of the Philippines reflects on her mother’s honorable sacrifice: leaving her family behind to support them while working abroad. You…
July 14, 2021Photo by Rodion Kutsaev / Unsplash When I met Emmanuel Carrère in 2014, I had one question for him. I was sent by the magazine I worked for at the time to interview him at a literary festival in whic…
July 13, 2021Sylvia Petter recalls Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker, who passed away June 4, not long after the book-themed TV series ÜBER featured her in its first episode. Friederike Mayrö…
July 7, 2021Photos by Mai Al-Nakib / Courtesy of the author Civilizations, empires, dynasties, and monarchies end, leaving behind ruins of their fabled splendor. Traces of achievements become more or less deciph…
March 24, 2021Poet and teacher K Za Win (1982–2021) / Photo courtesy of the author When I last visited Myanmar in 2013, it was to participate in the Irrawaddy Festival to launch Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporar…
March 23, 2021Beirut; Credit: George Azar A writer reflects on her relationship to home in Beirut. Why the windows of the room did not shatter from the August 4 explosion is still a mystery. The building…
February 18, 2021Photo by Tyler Quiring / Unsplash Ismail Kadare has a remarkable quality of saying a great deal and with much clarity, but in an elusive, oblique, and allegorical way. Peter Constantine situates…
October 13, 2020Detail from Glück’s letter to the author / Courtesy of the author In a tribute to her teacher being named the 2020 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a past protégée off…
September 30, 2020To mark the upcoming 2020 Neustadt Lit Fest and the announcement of the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, here is an excerpt featuring the children’s and young…
July 29, 2020Photo by Carlos Lechuga Translator’s note: On July 16, 2020, the Cuban government announced a set of economic reforms that includes the immediate rescission of the 10 percent surcharge on the US…
July 20, 2020From the Family Album A writer born in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir reflects on how his older brother must have felt once the freedom to roam the apricot grove and streets of the village…
July 17, 2020Photo courtesy of the author Judging an English Olympiad in Kyrgyzstan, the author witnesses her native tongue “being sliced and slivered like a summer melon” while the heart of…
January 7, 2020Adapted from a photo by Jake weirick on Unsplash Like a dead pop star, Susan Sontag left behind a lot of fans who claim they knew her. After the release last September of Benjamin Moser’s new biograp…
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