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Excerpts

Crossing

Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston

"When I think about my own death, the moment it happens is always the same. I’m wearing a plain, colored shirt and a matching pair of pants, cut from thin material that’s easy to pull on. It’s early in the morning and I am happy, I feel the same sense of contentment and satisfaction as I do at the first mouthfuls of my favorite meal. There are certain people around me, I don’t know them yet, but one day I will, and I’m in a certain place, lying on my hospital bed in my own room, nobody is dying around me, outside the day is slowly struggling to its feet like a rheumatic old man, I hear certain words from the mouths of my loved ones, a certain touch on my hand, and the kiss on my cheek feels like the home I have built around me like a shrine."


The Republic

Joost de Vries, translated by Jane Hedley-Prôle

"Moments after arriving in Chile I slipped on the aircraft steps, and although my fall was broken by various items of hand luggage and the elderly couple in front of me, I still hit the tarmac with considerable force. I mostly felt embarrassed. A stewardess hurried over and took me to a first-aid post at the terminal, where a young doctor cleaned and bandaged the graze on my upper arm. Sorted. A mere ten minutes later I was in a taxi."


What Will Happen to the World as
Life Expectancy Goes Up?

The Population Bomb, Redux


Olive Schreiner: Charlotte Brontë of South Africa, 19th-Century Celebrity

On Compassion and Dissent in an Outpost of Empire


The Old Drift

Namwali Serpell

"Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Over the past year, Thandiwe had developed an internal clock for when the seat-belt sign would go off. As the plane’s steep climb slowly tilted forward and evened out, she counted. Tick. Tick. DING."


Anatomy of a Perfect Album: On Joni Mitchell’s Blue

"Only a phase, these dark café days."


A Change of Time

Ida Jessen, translated by Martin Aitken

"January 3, 1904. I am on my way now. Everything is packed. I haven’t even the time to write this. I shall continue later."


Meet the Reclusive Woman Who Became a Pioneer of Science Fiction

The Amazing Stories of Clare Winger Harris


Did Seneca Write a Treatise on Anger in Response to Unstable Leaders?

"Your anger is a kind of madness." The Ancients Talking About Twitter, Probably


Deep Time and an Uncertain Futureon the Orkney Islands

Considering Energy Solutions in Remote Communities


The Quest to Acquire the Oldest, Most Expensive Book on the Planet

Unwrapping the Most Beautiful Gutenberg of Them All


Arturo’s Island

Elsa Morante, translated by Ann Goldstein

"Seeing her again now, I was ashamed that the day before I’d been so intimate with her, going so far as to tell her my secrets! On the bench, forgotten, was my book of Great Leaders: and that sight increased my shame. Angrily I opened the French door, and then finally she saw me."


Barry Lopez on the Hard Question of Humanity’s Survival

Thoughts on Life from a Remote Arctic Island


Andrea Dworkin’s Argument Against Punctuation

On the Freedom of Violating Convention


Make Me a City

Jonathan Carr

"The very title of Mr. Winship’s rambling, labyrinthine tome about Chicago in the nineteenth century hints at the confusion that lies in store for the unsuspecting reader. His opus, claims the author, is both 'Alternative' and a 'History.' An 'Alternative,' one wonders, to what? Any attempt to compare Mr. Winship’s book with the work of serious historians who have addressed key periods of the century gone by would soon founder. For a text to be categorized as 'history' implies, does it not, that attention has been paid to historical truth and accuracy? Anyone, then, who ignores facts or, even worse, blithely distorts facts for his own 'Alternative' purposes has no right to attach the label of 'History' to his offering."


Memories of the Future

Siri Hustvedt

"Years ago I left the wide, flat fields of rural Minnesota for the island of Manhattan to find the hero of my first novel. When I arrived in August of 1978, he was not a character so much as a rhythmic possibility, an embryonic creature of my imagination, which I felt as a series of metrical beats that quickened and slowed with my steps as I navigated the streets of the city. I think I was hoping to discover myself in him, to prove that he and I were worthy of whatever story came our way. I wasn’t looking for happiness or comfort in New York City. I was looking for adventure, and I knew the adventurer must suffer before he arrives home after countless trials on land and sea or is finally snuffed out by the gods. I didn’t know then what I know now: As I wrote, I was also being written. The book had been started long before I left the plains. Multiple drafts of a mystery had already been inscribed in my brain, but that didn’t mean I knew how it would turn out. My unformed hero and I were headed for a place that was little more than a gleaming fiction: the future."


Samuel Beckett, Thrower of Shade

From Frederic Pajak's Illustrated Memoir, Uncertain Manifesto


Oksana, Behave!

Maria Kuznetsova

"Papa had been the USSR Math Olympics champion when he was sixteen, but all he’d managed to achieve was working for Goldman Sachs. He had competed all over the Soviet Union, from Tallinn to Vladivostok, and had even gotten to shake Brezhnev’s hand in a big ceremony when he won. But nobody cared about the Math Olympics in America. Mama loved to remind me of all of Papa’s sacrifices for our family and told me to go easy on him, especially when he did things that were “good for his soul,” like blasting classical music in his car as loud as humanly possible without caring about his passengers—namely, me. That morning, I massaged my temples, hoping Papa would get the picture, amazed that even classical music could be offensive at a high volume."


James Joyce’s Dublin, a Microcosm of the World

The Streets in Ulysses Are the Streets of the Everyman


The Word for Woman is Wilderness

Abi Andrews

"The space probe Voyager 1 left the planet in 1977. Any month, day, minute, second now it will enter interstellar space and become the furthest-reaching man-made object, and the first to leave the heliosphere. This will be one of the biggest moments in scientific history and we will never know exactly when it happened. Three things would signify that Voyager 1 had crossed the border of the heliopause: an increase in galactic cosmic rays, reversal of the direction of the magnetic field, and a decrease in the temperature of charged particles. Voyager 1 reports show a 25 percent increase per month of cosmic rays. But its signals take 17 hours to travel back to Earth at the speed of light."


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