Fiction

Movements in the Deep

A Japanese mystery that evokes the slippery nature of memory

Cauldron Bubble

Fermentation is a familiar process in food preparation but has also long been used as a metaphor for societal change, cultural change, political change, economic…

World Literature

The Spirit of Cities

Cities are smells: Cairo is mango and ginger, Beirut sun, sea, smoke and lemons. But in many of our cities the waters are rising. In…

World History

A World of Tears

A man finds himself in Antwerp with nothing to do. Then he remembers, among other things, that this is the town where the painter Peter…

World Literature

A Plump Pillow

Japanese poets have traditionally taken pilgrimages to locations of great scenic allure, seeking out wondrous places that are so inviting, so lovely, that poems wish…

World Literature

Hell-bent

Imagination is essential for human understanding and compassion. But in Hannah Arendt’s words, the human heart must go visiting, otherwise we lose our power to…

World Literature

On Quijotismo

Cervantes’s ‘Don Quixote’ was about a man who steps out of the matrix. Tilting at windmills, on a quest for a princess, he appears crazy…