Hamza Abu Howidy, a Palestinian, is committed to peace between Israel and Palestine. His book "Muscheln am Strand von Gaza" (Shells on the beach in Gaza) describes his life under Hamas’s reign of terr...

A Story from Cameroon

Gastronarratives of the Afro-Ecuadorian Coast: Food, Relationality, and the Reimagining of the Republic

Reality and Imagination in Palestinian and Israeli Children’s Literature

Donica Merhazion was born in 1979 in a prison in Addis Ababa. In "Born at the End of the World", she tells the story of her parents and of Asmara – from the open-minded city of the 1960s to the terror...

In "Schattenleben" (Shadow Life), Lisa Frühbeis and Jonas Seufert give four undocumented people a face and a name – names they are not actually allowed to have.

Like Alexander the Great, the U.S. president wanted to sever the Gordian knot of power dynamics in the Middle East. His sword was not sharp enough. Vali Nasr’s "Iran’s Grand Strategy" explains the bac...

Set against the backdrop of a neonatal intensive care unit, dating apps, and the threat of war, Leh-Wei Liao’s 'Glaszeit' (The Age of Glass) tells the story of bodies and life paths that defy their su...

From recognising others to defending a Kogui girl, it is clear how ethnocide originates in ways of thinking and how it can be prevented through action.

Cynical to the point of being unbearable: In Tony Tulathimutte’s multi-award-winning collection of short stories, "Rejection", the outsiders among the millennials raise their (literary) voices

Ugandan lawyer, poet and human rights advocate Awadifo Olga Norah on writing as ethical inquiry, the aftermath of violence, women as builders of peace – and literature’s power to preserve memory

In 'Leila & Khaled', Nyla Matuk tells not only of a return to Palestine, but also of the impossibility of escaping the images shaped by her own Western socialisation

A conversation with Lebanese writer Iman Humaydan about her latest novel, Lebanon, memory, patriarchy, migration – and why literature is stronger than a manifesto

A Cameroonian story from Switzerland

With 'Fatherland', Paweł Pawlikowski responds to Colm Tóibín’s Thomas Mann novel with radical minimalism: a film of glances, pauses and empty spaces – overwhelmingly beautiful, though at times too asc...

A short story from Malawi

A short story from Brazil

A short story from southern Iraq

A short story from Kolkata, India

A short story from Ghana

A short story set in Bosnia, Turkey, and Germany—and the Europe in between

A story from Azerbaijan

A short story from Naga City in Camarines Sur, Bicol Region, Philippines

A short story from South Sudan

An exile’s very last summer in the old city of Jerusalem

A Chinese-Canadian Story

Refineries, a curse, and black gold. Workers, legends, petroleum. Nastaran Makaremi’s novel "Total" revolves around oil. And then becomes part of its next transformation.

On Art, Silence, and Moral Complicity

Ethnologist Heike Behrend is researching a German provincial prophet who ran a commercial "Garden of Paradise" in the Altmark region in the early 20th century

Lebanese writer Iman Humaydan speaks about her novel 'Songs for Darkness', the memory of war, women’s lives, migration, and why literature can preserve what history and politics often erase.

A conversation with Lebanese writer Iman Humaydan about her latest novel, Lebanon, memory, patriarchy, migration – and why literature is stronger than a manifesto

Today’s financial elite are ultra-rich. The term refers to the ultimate level of wealth, beyond anything that can be tangibly grasped. In “The Haves and Have-Yachts”, Evan Osnos brings us news from an...

If only Christopher Nolan had listened to James Joyce. Instead, he transforms Homer’s fluid, ambiguous 'Odyssey' into a rigid monument of masculine pathos, plot-driven drama, and sensory overload.

The Queer Body and the Boundaries of Citizenship in Iraq

Is humanity an unsolvable enigma? A critical reflection on the limits of the human sciences, the impossibility of fully understanding the other, and the crisis in our understanding of humanity.

Award-winning Ghanaian writer Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri on grief, belonging, Black imagination, literary life in Ghana, and why writing began with unfinished drawings

What does waste tell us about our world? An exhibition in Dortmund traces the global journey of waste, highlighting the connections between the economy, waste, and recycling, and looks at the conseque...

Yang Shuang-zi’s award-winning novel 'Taiwan Travelogue' blends colonial history, desire and culinary art with as much emotion as intelligence – and every dish is allowed to tell a story of power

How does Gen Z view the world? Photographers from this generation – born between 1995 and 2010 – are now exhibiting their work in Frankfurt am Main, following their presentation at Photo Elysée in Lau...

In "The Anarchy", William Dalrymple recounts how the British East India Company conquered the mighty Mughal Empire, plundered the wealthy region of Bengal, and, in its day, became an early symbol of g...

Abdellah Taïa's "Die Bastion der Tränen" is a poetic and painful novel about homosexuality, exile and the incurable wounds of origin, family and social confinement in a Morocco of memory

A billionaire, the blood of young women, bomb-making, Islamists online: Madeline Cash collects contemporary conspiracy theories. It’s funny, but why does *Lost Sheep* remain silent when power is laid ...

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 pro...

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.

During the covid pandemic, journalist Angelique Geray wanted to understand the thinking behind covid deniers and why they become conspiracy theorists. To do this, she created a cover identity.

In "Edo's Souls", Stella Gaitano condenses family history, civil war and the female experience into a novel of poetic force and analytical clarity, impressive also in its language and structure

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 co...

A poem from Tunisia