Joshua Cohen The Imps of His Age In a harrowing, witty novel by Miroslav Krleža, written in Yugoslavia on the eve of World War II, a mediocre lawyer succumbs to the impetus to speak against all reason. June 6, 2023
Roya Hakakian Iran’s Killers in Our Midst When the FBI told me I was a target, I was shocked but not surprised. Even in US suburbs, the regime’s critics are not safe from its assassins. August 22, 2021
Xu Zhangrun The Refusal of One Decent Man “What I have done is to continue in a tradition long hallowed among educated individuals in China by following the dictates of my conscience to speak out against tyranny.” August 21, 2021
Xu Zhangrun Xi’s China, the Handiwork of an Autocratic Roué Of course, the regime has rained down punishments on me for my criticisms; I expected that. It only exposes its inherent fragility and unfitness for the modern world. August 9, 2021
Amy Knight Navalny, Ready to Run Again in Russia “The most convincing testimony to Aleksei Navalny’s effectiveness as an opposition politician is the threat he poses to the Kremlin’s political survival and the trouble to which Putin and allies are willing to go in attempting to destroy him.” December 3, 2020
Ian Johnson The Specter Haunting Xi’s China Enter Xu Zhangrun. A fifty-six-year-old professor of constitutional law at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, Xu is well known in Beijing as a moderate and prolific critic of the government’s increasing embrace of authoritarianism. April 19, 2019
Ian Johnson Ruling Through Ritual Guo Yuhua: In Chinese society, everything that seems impossible or completely weird actually does happen, so how can you not comment on it? It’s intolerable. June 18, 2018