Politics Literature Arts Ideas

International

James Walton

Doomed to Lucidity

Though Andrew Miller is a master of traditional narrative, he has struggled to escape the formulas of his fiction.

October 6, 2022 issue

Leslie T. Chang

Little Town on the Prairie

Liang Hong’s best-selling account of returning to her home village inspired an outpouring of Chinese nonfiction about the country’s immense social changes.

October 6, 2022 issue

Alex de Waal

The Vanishing Point of the Laws of War

Almost all modern famines, including those in Yemen and Tigray, are caused by tactics of war. What would it take to prevent them?

September 11, 2022

Text and art by Molly Crabapple

In the Shadow of Invasion

Across Ukraine, people fight, grieve, sing, skateboard, selfie. “We will think of our pain after victory.”

September 9, 2022

Michael D. Gordin

Our Toxic Nuclear Present

Blindness to the aftermath of nuclear detonations has consistently marginalized some of the most traumatized victims of the atomic age.

September 22, 2022 issue

Joshua Hammer

Promise and Disillusion in South Africa

Despite a shift in political power, the country is plagued by racial divisions and economic inequalities.

September 22, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Party’s Over

Boris Johnson’s short and flippant dalliance with power will have very long and serious consequences.

September 22, 2022 issue

Joshua Leifer

An Uneasy Alliance in Jerusalem

This November’s parliamentary elections will in large part be a referendum on the participation of Palestinian-Arabs as equals to Jews in Israel’s political process.

August 22, 2022

On Ukraine

Timothy Snyder

Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism

Ivan Ilyin provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism, which he expressed in practical outlines for a fascist state. Today, his ideas have been revived and celebrated by Vladimir Putin.

March 16, 2018

Tim Judah

Holding On in Irpin

For the moment, the Ukrainians are winning by simply not losing.

April 7, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Last of Her Kind

Angela Merkel emerged from the ruins of the Eastern bloc as a spectacular example of the way the collapse of an old regime might create a much more benign sense of opportunity.

April 7, 2022 issue

Fred Kaplan

‘A Bridge Too Far’

Even the most ardent advocates of NATO expansion after the implosion of the USSR realized that it had limits—and one of those limits was Ukraine.

April 7, 2022 issue

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Hawks Ascending

Russia’s war on Ukraine has opened up a new front in Washington’s foreign policy elite, mobilizing veterans of the cold war and Iraq. Especially on the right, a fierce fight is in prospect.

March 14, 2022

Tim Judah

Ukraine on the Brink

It is quite normal to refuse to believe that you are about to be engulfed by a cataclysm.

March 24, 2022 issue

Antonia Hitchens

Among Ukraine’s Foreign Fighters

The spectacle of popular resistance to the Russian invasion has drawn thousands of volunteers to the international legion. But who are they, and what motivates them?

March 26, 2022

Olesya Khromeychuk and Sonya Bilocerkowycz

The Nation Ukraine Has Become

The reason resistance to the Russian invasion is so strong is that the country’s people already chose a new, decisively democratic identity.

March 25, 2022

The Latest

Jenny Uglow

Silences and Scars

Two new books on Berlin track the city through decades of growth, economic desperation, artistic innovation, Nazi terror, political division, and reunification.

October 20, 2022 issue

Ian Johnson

China: Back to Authoritarianism

Xi Jinping, who is about to be granted an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, has turned out to be an ambitious strongman who has remade the political system and expanded his own power.

October 20, 2022 issue

Neal Ascherson

Hugging the Shores

Colin Thubron’s latest travelogue takes him down the Amur River and through the borderlands between Russia and China.

October 20, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Two Elizabeths

The queen presided over the death of a British world and yet was enormously successful in keeping alive the monarchy that symbolized it.

October 20, 2022 issue

Darryl Pinckney

‘She Captured All Before Her’

It used to be that people complained how little they knew of Queen Elizabeth. Toward the end, her remoteness was treasured.

October 20, 2022 issue

Larry Wolff

The Struggle Over Verdi

The mood of urgency and unease in La Forza del Destino—the opening performance of this year’s Parma Verdi Festival—also hangs over Italy ahead of Sunday’s national elections.

September 24, 2022

Sarah Schulman

The Same Problem on Repeat

Monkeypox is now, with Covid-19 and HIV, one of the viruses at the center of American life. Yet even now that preventive treatments for all three exist, the US has failed to help people access them.

September 4, 2022