Book review – reportage
Kazakhstan is about the size of Europe — but we know almost nothing about it
Kazakhstan, say signs by the side of the road in this vast Central Asian country, is ‘a land of unity…
Bombs and begonias: gardening in a war zone
During the civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, Mr and Mrs Roami, a science professor and a nurse,…
Texas: the myriad contradictions of the Lone Star state
The subtitle of Lawrence Wright’s splendid God Save Texas (‘A Journey into the Future of America’) would be alarming if…
Why do the Japanese despise sex?
There are two sorts of people: those who can’t wait to grow up, and those who wish they never had…
Think of five things you use daily that weren’t made in a factory
Industrial factories huddle at the very edge of our world view. Most of us have never visited one, but we…
False confessions to murder in 1970s Iceland
Everyone in Iceland has heard of Gudmunder and Geirfinnur. They were two (unrelated) men who disappeared in 1974, albeit ten…
The murderer who got away – and the woman who died in pursuit
This true-crime narrative ought, by rights, to be broken backed, in two tragic ways. One is that the serial attacker…
Today’s pirate gold is the Patagonian toothfish
Sea Shepherd is a radical protest group made famous — or notorious — by the American cable TV series Whale…
Risking all for the perfect mocha coffee
‘This guy’s crazy,’ says a taxi driver, listening to a BBC interview with a man who has decided to become…
The Litvinenko case: Mayfair murder most foul
On 1 November 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB officer and by then a British citizen, met two of his former colleagues,…
Ben Judah feels like a stranger in his native London
‘I was born in London,’ Ben Judah tells us early in this vivid portrait of Britain’s capital, ‘but I no…
For Egypt, a bitter winter has followed the Arab spring
Jack Shenker is a throwback to an older, more romantic age when foreign correspondents were angry, partisan and half-crazed with…
Rodolfo González Alcántara is lord of the dance
‘Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough,’ said Gustave Flaubert. He might have been talking about this…
The revolution that went up in smoke
‘Every day’, writes the foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson in this account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, ‘see-sawed between joy and…
The Anonymous ghost in the machine
Why would you send an anthropologist — as this book’s author, Gabriella Coleman, is — to study Anonymous, the indescribable…
From working-class heroes to Disney World mascots: the sad fate of the Chilean miners
On 5 August 2010, 33 men entered the remote San José mine in Chile’s Atacama desert to begin their 12-hour…
Did Hurricane Katrina have an angel of mercy — or an angel of death?
On 28 August 2005 — Sheri Fink’s Day One — Hurricane Katrina reached New Orleans. The National Weather Service warned…
In the heart of darkness, the atom bomb
At the dark heart of this dark book is a startling fact: Joseph Conrad was employed to steam up the…
