Carson McCullers
In The Square Root of Wonderful, her stand-in Phillip cries out: ‘Don’t understand my writing. Understand me.’ The writing is what we have, though, and the real genius of it is something that would see through the sordidness of her adult life in an instant. It is something intact and childlike that watches from an unmoving corner in the still Southern air. It is deforming to be a prodigy, but for someone like McCullers, it is perhaps more deforming to stop being one. Her work turns on the moment when the prodigy must leave the inner room and go out into the world. More
A New World for Women
In my summer birdcage of reading and rereading I only cried once. It wasn’t the novels that provoked tears, but a government report. I am used to crying over government reports. Various 19th-century commissions of inquiry into child labour in libraries around the country are stained with my tears. I cried over the Robbins Report because I found for the first time something I had always known: ‘The trials that their parents had to undergo are in themselves sufficient reason for the country to exert itself to meet the needs of their children.’ A government report compiled in the spirit of social justice! I love the state because it has loved me. My tears were tears of acknowledgment. More
Underground in Raqqa
Tactical agility won’t be enough to save the caliphate, which is now being overwhelmed on multiple fronts. Islamic State’s great strength came from the way it combined religious cult and war machine; its weakness was that it saw the whole world as its enemy, which meant that it would always be outnumbered and outgunned. Without allies and dealing only in violence, it led an unlikely alliance of states normally hostile to one another to find common cause against it, and engage in a degree of reluctant co-operation. As IS comes close to losing its power, old rivalries and divisions are beginning to re-emerge – but in a political landscape significantly reshaped by the war with IS. More
LATEST AUDIO
AUDIO Living Orients
Olivier Roy tells Adam Shatz about his travels in Afghanistan (Part One). Listen »
AUDIO Absolute Revolt
Adam Shatz and Olivier Roy discuss the deculturation of Islam (Part Two). Listen »
