The new flesh / Modern body horror beyond gore

 

Margaret Qualley as Sue in Substance, the younger, polished alter ego that turns beauty into a haunting split identity

The new flesh: modern body horror beyond gore

How Substance, The Ugly Stepsister, and Together redefine the genre

23 OCTOBER 2025, 

ALENA LYSIAKOVA

It begins with a body that doesn’t behave, and not in a cute “I tripped on my way to the bar” way. In Substance, skin glistens like a luxury product fresh from its packaging, promising perfection at a cost you won’t see on the label. In The Ugly Step-sister, the Cinderella fairy tale you thought you knew gets warped until limbs and features reshape into something unrecognisable, yet painfully human. In Together, love becomes an act of merging so complete it erases the border between “me” and “you”, a relationship goal only if your idea of romance involves shared internal organs.

Game over for bad adaptations / Why "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" finally broke the curse

 

Fallout, an American post-apocalyptic drama television series, was created for Amazon Prime Video by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dwore

Game over for bad adaptations

Why "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" finally broke the curse

23 NOVEMBER 2025, 

ALENA LYSIAKOVA

For decades, video game adaptations had one job: disappoint everyone. Studios would slap a recognizable title on a film (Super Mario Bros. 1993, Prince of Persia 2010, Uncharted 2022) and hope nostalgia alone would cover the plot holes. It didn’t. What they served up wasn’t the thrill of gameplay; it was like being forced to watch your older cousin hog the controller and then narrate his moves badly.

Laughing through the apocalypse / The rise of existential comedy

 

Set in a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles devastated by nuclear fallout, Fallout follows citizens forced to live in underground bunkers to survive radiation, mutants, and roaming bandits

Laughing through the apocalypse 

The rise of existential comedy

23 APRIL 2026, 

ALENA LYSIAKOVA

From The White Lotus to Don’t Look Up, Hazbin Hotel, and Fallout, we’re no longer crying about the end: we’re cracking jokes.

 

A silent crowd gathers beneath an illuminated cross, their candlelight flickering under the watch of cameras and drones, capturing the uneasy convergence of faith, surveillance, and collective power in the modern age

21st-century fascism and the antichrist

Apocalyptic politics, religious extremism, and the transformation of fascism in the age of technological power

13 APRIL 2026, 

BOAVENTURA DE SOUSA SANTOS

 

Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Triumph of Death 

A two-headed Hitler

War and peace as dual strategies of domination in contemporary global politics

20 APRIL 2026, 

BOAVENTURA DE SOUSA SANTOS

In what is perhaps the best book on Hitler, Allan Bullock wrote in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny that Hitler’s philosophy is the natural philosophy of the doss-house, the philosophy of homeless shelters – a philosophy he learned while living in those shelters in Vienna for some time. Of course, Bullock forgot to apologize to the homeless because among them there is more than one philosophy, and above all there are philosophies contrary to the one he identifies. But the one he identifies is no less true for that. As evident in Mein Kampf and Hitler’s subsequent speeches and practices, the main elements of this philosophy are as follows:

Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito

Machiavelli’s conception of power and agency in 'The Prince'

The role of fortune in political success

8 FEBRUARY 2026, 

AYBIKE PIYADE

This analysis explores how Niccolò Machiavelli conceptualizes fortune (fortuna) in the success or failure of a political leader in The Prince. Drawing upon key historical references and philosophical reasoning, it examines how Machiavelli balances the unpredictable nature of fortune with the decisive qualities of virtù—an individual’s capacity to act wisely, courageously, and decisively in ever-changing political landscapes. Through the lens of Renaissance politics and human nature, the text reveals how rulers can, and must, bend fortune to their will to secure political stability and personal power.

The Rwandan genocide: causes and global response

Skulls displayed at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial Site in Nyamata, Rwanda

The Rwandan genocide: causes and global response

A tragic legacy of colonialism and international indifference

8 MAY 2025, 

AYBIKE PIYADE

The continent of Africa is considered the birthplace of humanity, it has become a continent where crimes against humanity have been committed extensively. Crimes against humanity committed on the African continent, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, also commonly known as Black Africa, have often been seen by the world community as a familiar, usual, and customary part of tribal conflicts and civil wars. In 1994, the press described the genocide in Rwanda as a tribal war between ethnic groups. This definition, which was often seen in the Western press in those years, makes clear the West's stance and its unresponsiveness to crimes against humanity in Rwanda or anywhere else in the world outside of its interests. The genocide in Rwanda took place in a very short period of about 100 days in 1994. 

The Cat by Juan Carlos Onetti

Illustration by Triunfo Arciniegad

The Cat
By Juan Carlos Onetti

Many unpleasant things can be said or imagined about John. But I never suspected him of lying; he had too much disdain for others to invent a fable that would put him in a favorable light.

 

Women's prize for fiction

Susan Choi and Lily King shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction

The US writers join four debut authors in demonstrating ‘the complexity and beauty of the female experience’, said chair of judges Julia Gillard

David Malouf
Ulf Andersen

David Malouf, Australian author of Remembering Babylon and Ransom, dies aged 92

Acclaimed Brisbane-born writer was known for his work exploring his own childhood, great myths and colonial Australia

Sian Cain

Thursday 23 April 2023

David Malouf, the acclaimed Australian author of books including Ransom, An Imaginary Life and the Booker prize-nominated Remembering Babylon, has died aged 92.

 

Zombies of Capital: On Reading Ling Ma’s Severance

Written On 10 June 2020. Posted In Article, Work Of Arts.

Author: Ivan Franceschini

Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.

Karl Marx, Capital Volume One (1867)

 

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt review – life after Paul Auster

 

Siri Hustvedt

REVIEW

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt review – life after Paul Auster

What’s it like to lose your partner of more than 40 years? The novelist and essayist reflects on going from ‘we’ to ‘I’

Sukhdev Sandhu

Tuesday 21 April 2026

‘After all the horrible things we’ve been through,’ he said to me, ‘if I die of cancer, it will make a bad story’: Siri Hustvedt on losing Paul Auster

 

Siri Hustvedt
Photo by Chris Buck

‘After all the horrible things we’ve been through,’ he said to me, ‘if I die of cancer, it will make a bad story’: Siri Hustvedt on losing Paul Auster

First there was the double tragedy that tore the family apart – then came a deadly diagnosis. The writer reflects on life after the death of her novelist husband

Siri Hustvedt
Sunday 19 April 2026

Iam alive. My husband, Paul Auster, is dead. He died on 30 April 2024, at 6.58pm here in the Brooklyn house where I am now writing these words. He was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer in January 2023. But before that, in early November 2022, Paul had a CT scan in the emergency room at Mount Sinai West hospital. The radiologist spotted a mass in his right lung and noted it might be cancer.

Siri Hustvedt to write a book about her late husband Paul Auster

 

Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt to write a book about her late husband Paul Auster

This article is more than 1 year old

The American writer is 120 pages into a memoir about her relationship with the New York Trilogy author, entitled Ghost Stories

Lucy Knight

Thursday 17 October 2024

Siri Hustvedt has revealed that she is working on a memoir about her late husband, Paul Auster, author of the acclaimed New York Trilogy.