Mandela is analyzed here less as an heroic historical figure than a contested symbol of transition between political epochs. A reflection on neoliberalism, generational rupture, and the unfinished promises of post-apartheid South Africa.

An Egyptian short story

A critical reflection on the deep origin of human rules: prohibition, culture and social unconscious versus the rationalist fictions of liberalism and contemporary Marxism

Why the combination of mysticism, ontology and radical truthfulness of the Hurufi poet Imadeddin Nesimi continues to have an impact today – as a challenge for individual freedom, language and lived conviction

A poem from Tunisia

Five poems from Algeria

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

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

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

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

A short story from Yemen

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

Ahmad Aboukhnegar, a little-known Egyptian writer of magical realism

A short story from Iraq

They are among the most distinguished, productive and charming writers in the German-speaking world - and they are a couple: Dana Grigorcea and Perikles Monioudis