May 2026

Radical, honest, incorruptible

Under the heading "As I please", George Orwell published columns in the 1940s that are still worth reading today. They are now available in slightly different editions in German and English.

The Silence of the Prelude in C major

Five poems from Algeria

My Grandfather Hussein

A short story from Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish region in northeastern Syria

Puzzle

Poetry for reconstruction and remembrance: a reading by Ana Castillo Muñoz

The singularity of the absurd

Between illusion and knowledge, science's claim to truth is increasingly fading; instead, intuition, error and doubt mark what we think we know

Between political amnesia and diaspora experience, Su Chang shows in her compelling debut novel "The Immortal Woman" how violence is perpetuated in bodies and biographies. Even where freedom is promised

My Homeland in the Caves of Death

From Siegfried Kracauer to Abdullah Al-Baradouni: Reading Yemen through poetry, fiction, and cultural analysis as a way of tracing the hidden dynamics of power, illusion, and collapse before they surface as reality

Umm Al-Duwais

A short story from Yemen

The pen that makes thrones tremble

How Victor Hugo, through both his words and stance, exposed the tyranny of Napoleon III - and why a pen can be stronger than power, fear and empires

“The best version of us is WE”

In "Ubuntu – The Raw Truth Unravelled", Mthulisi Ndlovu frames Ubuntu as a universal, ethical counterforce to modern fragmentation – melding poetic urgency with political, spiritual, and communal critique.