Eileen Chang is one of the most celebrated modern Chinese novelists and essayists of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her life as a writer and woman in wartime Shanghai and Hong… Read More Written on Water
Putin once saw advantage in giving writers a degree of freedom, even to be critical. Those days are long gone, and Russia’s artists are fleeing William Fear As much as Russia is the country of Tolstoy and Rachmaninov, it is also the country of Stalin and the Lubyanka prison – a nation built as much on beauty… Read More As the Ukraine war grinds on, Russia is becoming a cultural wasteland
And God made him die during the course of a hundred years and then He revived him and said:“How long have you been here?” / “A day, or part of a day,” he replied. The Koran, II 261 On the night of March 14, 1939, in an apartment on the Zelternergasse in Prague, Jaromir Hladik,… Read More Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Secret Miracle’ (1943)
First posted June 23, 2014. Reposted here in memory of Ranajit Guha (23 May 1923 – 23 April 2023). RIP Ranjitda NB: This was written for the International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2001 edition. I had erroneously dated it in 2002). The review may also be read online here. An Indian school of… Read More Review of Subaltern Studies (2001)
A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré; ed. Tim Cornwell by Peter Hitchens John le Carré, whose real name was David Cornwell, was Britain’s greatest novelist of the late twentieth century. He was also a sneaky government nark, who spied on his friends for the state. He sent damaging reports on them to the… Read More The double life of John le Carré
A First Folio edition of William Shakespeare’s plays that was published in 1623 is being put on display. By Yasmin Rufo Guildhall Library will be showcasing the rare book as part of a celebration of 400 years since the book was published. Copies of the First Folio edition were sold for between 15 shillings and… Read More First edition Shakespeare text from 1623 goes on display
The labor historians of the 1960s were born into the culture of unity forged in the working-class movement’s classical phase, between 1890 and 1945. In one form or another, they told the story of this era, not realizing how radically it might come undone. Gabriel Winant Labor’s Mind: A History of Working-Class Intellectual Lifeby Tobias… Read More “Hurrah for the Time Man!” Tribute to David Montgomery (1927-2011)
By Faisal Mohammed Ali Ash, soot-stained walls, burnt furniture and charred pages: that’s all that remains of a 113-year-old madrassa library in India that once housed more than 4,500 books, including ancient manuscripts and sacred Islamic texts written in beautiful calligraphy. The library was part of the Madrassa Azizia – a well-known religious school in… Read More Bihar Sharif: The 113-year-old India library torched in a riot
A thorough dissection of America’s capitalist mythology reveals the sham to which lots of people continue to subscribe, despite growing nationwide suffering. Much of what is now a core part of the American psyche is a series of get-rich-quick schemes passed off as meritocratic necessities within a capitalist society. Key words and phrases like “the… Read More It’s Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It
The regime’s mimicry of Pakistan in rewriting India’s history Mukul Kesavan The decision to allegedly unburden schoolchildren by deleting the Mughal era from their history curriculum has provoked amusing memes: images of the Taj Mahal complete with captions about its mysterious origins and jokes about gallant medieval Rajput rulers routed by invisible armies. These are… Read More Maiming India
After the truth-shower 