175 Nonfiction entries in Mag: Articles
Insularity, Mobility, and Imagination: Writing from the Indian Ocean
In early March 2011, two news items about Mauritius landed in my inbox almost simultaneously: one, a glowing article in the U. S. news magazine Slate, titled “The Greatest Country on Earth,”…...
Moorings: Indo-oceanic Creolizations
Moorings (amarres in French), in Reunion Island Creole a profoundly polysemous term, also means link, ties, enchanted, bewitched, to be in love, to be enraptured, to be bonded, to care (amar lë…...
Peshawar
I liked Peshawar. I preferred it to hot, racing Rawalpindi, or grand, haughty Islamabad. I think I preferred it to any other city in the world. Indolent in the autumn sun, it was the perfect place for…...
A Report from Hell
The so-called "war on drugs" began five years ago. According to official sources, the victims—children, teens, adults, women, men—number roughly 50,000; other sources claim over 60,000 have…...
Violence and Drug-Trafficking in Mexico
In Mexico, people will pay up to $70,000 dollars for a license to hunt and kill a bighorn sheep. Killing a man is much cheaper—about $2,000, according to the rates charged by hitmen in Ciudad Juárez,…...
The Mystery of the Parakeet, the Rooster, and the Nanny Goat
The Tate Drugs Gallery Inside the Ministry of Defense in Mexico City is a museum that’s not open to the public. It displays all the jewels, weapons, clothing, and reliquaries that have been seized…...
Death Count
In the small hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese ended her shift at the bar as usual, took her car, and parked a few yards from the apartment complex where she lived, in Kew Gardens, Queens.…...
Tijuana: On the Pozole-Man’s Hill
1 A writer from Tijuana told me: “If you want to know what Tijuana is all about, you have to go there.” There was the village of Ojo de Agua, in a dusty valley on the outskirts of the city,…...
The Politics of Mourning
“Acapulco, September 18 [2010]. Two unidentified men, decapitated in the town of Coyuca de Catalán. Heads thrown into a soft-drink bottling plant from two moving vehicles. One has its eyes…...
Notes on the Violence in Sinaloa, Mexico
For two weeks I sensed violence as an invisible force. I only experienced one act of direct intimidation: a thirty-something, ultra-well-dressed woman with five-centimeter nails adorned with precious stones…...
Necessary or True Happenstances: An Introduction to the Work of Hye Young-Pyun
“O. Cuniculi” is featured in Hye Young-Pyun’s third collection of short stories, Evening Courtship, for which she was awarded the prestigious Dong-in Literature Prize last year. The story…...
About the Young Writer Zheng Xialou
Zheng Xiaolu, editor of a literary magazine, is only twenty-five years old. He was probably twenty-two when he wrote this story. Last year, he and another editor visited me to discuss how I arrange for…...
The World is Moving Around Me
My Nephew I stepped out into the yard with my nephew. The little shacks on the other side of the ravine stood up to the earthquake. The old wall collapsed. We sit on the hood of the car. “I’m…...
No Way Out: Talking to Orly Castel-Bloom, Agur Schiff, and Moshe Ron
Orly Castel-Bloom is getting ready to leave. “I’ll buy an apartment in Montpelier,” she said. “I’ll write policiers. I’ll tell the French about themselves. They love…...
God After Ten O’Clock
The State Security Building: The First Arrest of the Seagull It was maybe three or four o'clock, or maybe sometime in between. Why am I trying to establish an exact time? Curses on the clock that forces…...
The Egyptian Revolution Won’t be Fooled
Historically, popular revolutions are distinguished by moral purity and an adherence to lofty human principles—dignity, freedom, justice, and truth. Weren’t these principles the slogans…...
The View from Within: An Introduction to New Afghan Literature
In a discussion at the House of Culture in Stockholm just over a week ago, the Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi, having summarized the last three decades of Afghan history, concluded laconically that the…...
In Praise of the Margins
It’s not easy to paint a faithful picture of a literature in only a few words. And so, rather than presenting a broad overview of the current Quebec literary scene, I propose to bring to your attention…...
Noor Jehan
I think I first saw Noor Jehan in the film Khandan. They called her Baby in those days, but believe me when I say that she didn't look like a baby. On the contrary, her body had every feature that…...
Diary
Ravenna, October 15, 1963 Finally, after a year’s delay, we are in Ravenna. Just a week left before the first take. The Red Desert will be born after a long and difficult gestation. Those of us here…...
