Laleh Khalili

Laleh Khalili teaches at the University of Exeter. Her books include Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration and The Corporeal Life of Seafaring.

Showing Off: Superyachts

Laleh Khalili, 9 May 2024

According​ to a gushing photo-essay published in Life magazine in 1969, Prince Karim Aga Khan was an ‘outrageously wealthy young man, written off by many as a mere playboy’, who had proved his critics wrong with a display of business acumen – a vast real-estate venture in Sardinia. Sailing across the Mediterranean on one of his yachts, the Aga Khan had fallen in love with...

Gargantuanisation

John Lanchester, 22 April 2021

The shipping industry has worked hard to hide itself from view, and we have colluded with it. We don’t want to think about how that 90 per cent of everything got here. The labour of an entire industry...

Read more reviews

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences