Still, if journalism is the “first rough draft of history,” Kelley shows how crucial it is to write that first draft—as accurately as possible, yes—but not to get left behind. It’s a playful cautionary tale for the current moment. Make haste slowly; or, fact check quickly.
In the history of the advice column, one can glimpse the history of what can be said in public, and by whom. As literacy expanded to new social strata, and new periodicals circulated among increasingly diverse publics, what letter writers could divulge and columnists could discuss changed. What could not be divulged was sometimes still expressed, through various styles of discretion. “It has been my misfortune to be seduced into a very great sin,” one Querist explained to the Athenians; Norton suggests that his refusal to name his “very great sin” meant that he may have been referring to either gay sex or an illicit affair.
While Borjigin acknowledges that her work is preliminary, her observations and others like them show just how blurry the line between life and death has become, and how much science still stands to learn about such a pivotal event. As technological advances increasingly allow researchers to study death—including interventions that now allow for the use of so-called living cadavers in scientific research—so too have they necessitated new, oftentimes fraught conversations about the nature of death, its biological and societal underpinnings, and whether existing legal definitions are in alignment with current medical standards.
Scientifically, an echo is both the repetition of a sound caused by the reflection of sound waves and the resulting sound due to such reflection. A sound’s reflection, however, is never an exact mirror of what came. The soundwave is altered by everything with which it interacts. The entirety of the sum is the echo. David Welch’s latest book, The Book of Echoes, is successful to this end. The sonic elements, ideas, and images in this collection interweave the preoccupations of poets past and present in a joyous celebration of the art.
It’s easy to imagine that we would be the ones to stand up, speak out, and resist. But that’s seldom what happens when the rule of law is supplanted by a hierarchy of fear. First, our moral vocabularies begin to shrink, edging us ever closer to an aphasia of our principles. Next, we begin to look warily at those who still insist on conscience. Little by little, we submit. And then, when the knock comes at our neighbor’s door instead of our own, we congratulate ourselves for having identified the safest course of action.
Boris Fishman’s somber third novel, The Unwanted (2025), is a powerful allegory for why this surrender is the default posture of humanity. The protagonist, George, is a university professor in an unnamed country. A member of the minority sect, George first debases himself by agreeing to teach the poetry of the dominant sect. He reckons that each additional compromising step is a choice to keep his family safe a little longer as his nation’s leader attempts to protect the country from “vermin.” In fact, at the novel’s start, he has done little better than call the coin flip a few times in a row. There are no real choices here.
Every paragraph of Mushtaq’s prose is intricately drawn. Her feminism and rebellion are unmistakable, but packaged in wry humour and unforgettable characters. The stories are naturalistic and unflinching descriptions of Kannada. But they are also life-affirming, with moments of earnest sincerity sweeping the reader in an emotional wave.
Marina Warner begins this dazzlingly protean book with a distinctly mundane memory. It is the 1950s, she is a young teen, and the highlight of her week is going to the Saturday morning “flicks” with a neighbour’s slightly older daughter. One particular movie scene has stayed with her: it involves a man dressed in a vaguely historical costume who is fleeing for his life. Face contorted with terror, he makes it as far as the door of a cathedral, whereupon he knocks loudly and cries “Sanctuary!” The door opens a crack, the man slides inside, and the Saturday morning audience breaths a collective sigh of relief. Even if the plot points remain hazy – is Robin Hood somehow involved? – the underlying principle needs no explaining. The fugitive has invoked the ancient right by gaining entrance to a designated sacred space. As long as he stays put his pursuers can’t touch him.
From these hyper-local beginnings, Warner sets out to explore and expand what “sanctuary” means in an age when millions are on the move around the world, chased out of their homes by environmental disaster, economic collapse, war and political oppression.