Current Preoccupations
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Book | The Ice Prophet
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THE NETHERLANDS — While reading this new book about « Iceman » Wim Hof, one scene lodged itself most prominently in my mind: the one in which he goes to Amsterdam’s Vondelpark…
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Book | White Moss
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THE ARCTIC CIRCLE — An interview with Irina Sadovina, who recently translated a novel set in a nomadic Indigenous Nenets community in Northern Siberia, by Nenets writer Anna Nerkagi.
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Documentary | 2m²
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TURKEY/BELGIUM — If a Turkish migrant dies in Belgium, where and how should their loved ones visit them?
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Books | Interview Elina Alter
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RUSSIA IN EXILE — A Q&A with the translator and editor, who recommends Russian writers-in-exile to read.
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Looted Lauterbach
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The most sublime of the violins made by Antonio Stradivarius (Cremona, c. 1644-1737) have names like roses: there is the « Countess Polignac » and the « Davidov », the…
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It’s all about poetic swimmers
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« I am a philosopher, and philosophers do not often like to use big words. »
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Interview with Hazar Deniz Eker
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After a particularly active Current Preoccupation from mid-April 2026 — featuring a walk to the Belgian-French border and Issue Eleven contributor Hazar Deniz Eker — we published his essay, «…
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Walking into France like there’s no tomorrow
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How many beach borders have you seen in your life? This weekend, I found myself returning to a long-term project that started, as many things do, with a beach conversation…
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On the Hungarian elections
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« Last night didn’t just feel like an election victory, there was something of 1989 about it, the way people were dancing on the roofs of bus stops, forming a…
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The vanished world
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Monsieur and Madame Louis Cahen d’Anvers never liked Renoir’s portrait of their eight-year-old daughter; it was Madame Cahen d’Anvers’s lover who chose Renoir over a more fashionable society portraitist; they…
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Epic Failure
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Growing up on, and still happily consuming, American popular culture, my brain’s first association when it sees the letters e, p, i and c, is to read epic failure. And I hear the bass rumble…
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Underground rave, literary
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We are all explorers. Last week was Easter weekend. I’m not much of a Christian, but where I’m from (Latviaaaa!) it means family gatherings, eggs dyed with the first spring…