reportage
Cruelty and chaos in Karachi
Karachi, Pakistan’s troubled heart, is known to cast a seductive spell over residents and visitors alike. In Karachi Vice, the…
Exotic and endangered: Madagascar in peril
Madagascar. There are so many delightful incongruities about the island. Despite being off the coast of Africa, because of the…
Paradise regained: how the world’s wastelands are regenerating
Ignoring the padlocked gate, my six-year-old son Nicholas and I climbed through a break in the metal fence and pushed…
The Tibetans’ fight for freedom continues — but only just
‘Free Tibet!’ used to be a rallying cry for Hollywood A-listers and rock stars. Richard Gere hung out with the…
The story of Sealand – a most improbable sovereign state
In 2012, the editors of Vice ran an article aimed at would-be contributors to their self-avowedly edgy magazine headed ‘Never…
She just keeps rollin’ along: Colombia’s Magdalena River
As Colombia comes out of 50 years of civil war and into a still precarious peace, with some 220,000 dead,…
Should we all be prepping for the end of days?
In the Covid-19 crisis the calamity-howlers have found a vindication: go back to survival mode and bunker down because nobody…
The power of disinformation is that it’s so readily believed
On 27 November 1960 African and Indian diplomats visiting the UN in New York opened their mail to find a…
The Big Tech firms are dividing the world between them
Cory Doctorow on the vast, impersonal forces manipulating our lives
Splashing the cash at VIP nightclubs is now the favourite recreation of the rich
The spectacular extravagance of the VIP nightclub ‘experience’ could be the last bonfire of the vanities, says Lynn Barber
Our recent stockpiling is nothing to what ‘preppers’ lay in store
This book could not have been published at a better time — nor, in a way, at a worse time.…
The trade in cadavers is rife with scandal
John Troyer, the director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, has moves. You can…
A dark journey into a fanatical underworld
Two years ago, the counter-extremist analyst Julia Ebner decided she needed to delve deeper into the extremists trying to disrupt…
Tales from behind the veil: Moroccan women talk about lies and sex
The Moroccan-born Leïla Slimani has made her name writing novels of propulsive intensity. Lullaby, the story of a nanny who…
Rape has always been one of the deadliest weapons of war
Nothing prepared Antony Beevor for this devastating exposé of the systematic use of rape in war and ethnic cleansing
Is Tegucigalpa the crime capital of the world?
The Spanish journalist Alberto Arce worked for Associated Press in Honduras in 2012 and 2013. After a year, he says:…
The new mafias that rule the world
You may not have heard of the Maras. Or Barrio 18. Or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or the Zatas,…
Elizabeth Day urges women to be more ‘me first’, less ‘no, no, after you’
Paradise City, Elizabeth Day’s third novel, comes with an accompanying essay on The Pool — an online magazine for the…
They sought paradise in a Scottish field — and found hunger, boredom and mosquitoes
Dylan Evans, the author of this book, was one of those oddballs who rather looked forward to the apocalypse, because…
How Putin turned Russian politics into reality TV
‘We all know there will be no real politics.’ A prominent Russian TV presenter is speaking off the record at…
Sudan was always an invented country. Maybe we should invent it again
Sudan — a country that ceased to exist in 2011 — is or was one of the last untouristed wildernesses…
Narcoland, by Anabel Hernandez - review
It is by now surely beyond doubt that those governments committed to fighting the war on drugs — and on…
