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The Middle East is drowning in oppressive utopias
Read more: The Middle East is drowning in oppressive utopiasSimon Wolfgang Fuchs and Thomas Pierret explore the gap between oppressive and emancipatory utopias in the Middle East and North Africa

Ellroy and Me
By Nathan Ashman It was 2006 and James Ellroy was in the midst of penning the much anticipated third volume in his ‘Underworld USA Trilogy’, an epic criminal history of post-war America. I, meanwhile, was just about to begin my…

Normal People and the strangeness of other people
Towards the end of Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel Normal People, the two main characters, Connell and Marianne, talk sleepily one morning about whether it’s possible ever really to know another person. ‘I guess everyone is a mystery in a way’,…

The comforts of mystery
By Thomas Leitch Mystery and detective stories have always been my comfort-food reading. From the time I was weaned away from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie in the eighth grade, I’ve never…