Essays
-

Feeling political together
A four-hour journey into populist algorithms, and a soup that never got made.
-

Saving the angel
« This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. »
-

On being plagiarized
« To write a biography about a writer like Kiš is a violation of the poetics of the very author it claims to revere. »
-

The Passion of strangers: a philosophy of friendship
Friendship is the only stable social relationship for which « paperwork » has not been invented.
-

Looted libraries
« In both countries, it has left the government officials grappling with an extremely delicate and complex issue. Why is it so difficult to move forward? »
-

The plant whisperers
If you know what you are looking for, you find edible and healing plants everywhere.
-

Carry The Prophet in your coat pocketThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
When you’re fifteen and you read Kahlil Gibran’s mystical bestseller for the first time.
-

My untranslatable nameThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
When my parents went to register my name after I was born, they carried out an especially elaborate plan. They acquired a chocolate bar
-

My tongue is Simón Bolívar’s wet dream
My boyfriend had colombianized my Mexican. But my friends had also argentinized it, chileanized it, venezuelized it, ecuadorized it.
-

After midnight
The modern world races forward with all its technological might, yet remains trapped in a reactive cycle of disasters. Necessary responses follow catastrophes rather than prevent them.
-

The Palestinian seafront of the future — Joséphine Baker in HaifaThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
Long ago, on the coast of Palestine, an elegant Modernist casino was frequented by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. One night in 1943 Joséphine Baker performed.
-

Re-generationThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
Photos of young cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, who prove that after decades of depletion, soil recovery is possible.
-

Tree illness as metaphorThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
What do we tell ourselves when all the trees simply vanish?
-

The shortest, longest bus tripThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
Travelogue of a day in Minsk & an eternity at the EU border.

