May 19, 2025
- In defense of despair
- Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi on being released from ICE detention
- On the ethics of buying used books (and music)
- Close
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"It was early morning when Georgi woke them. An unreal, magical light came down through the ceiling. Wegener put on his passably dried clothing—the cloth trousers, the ironed vest, dogskin trousers, his thick, stuffed fur boots, the skiing shirt, the blue sleeveless cardigan. After a breakfast of shark in bread soup, Wegener tended to Loewe’s wounds one last time. Small pieces of bone had festered out over night. As they had no more bandages, he plucked the splinters out of the gauze with tweezers and reused the material."
"Stella Fortuna the Second’s earliest memory is of the day she almost died for the first time, the episode with the eggplant. Most of us have memories from when we are three or four years old—often foggy, impressionistic, colors or words instead of whole, solid moments. Stella had none of these. Her first memory was vivid, complete, and late: she was four and a half, and she was waking up in a shadowy brown room redolent with the sweet-rot smell of mint. She was in intense pain."