The editors' blog

HASSAN BLASIM'S DARK STORIES

Iraq is not a place we feel we must imagine. Since 2003 the country has been full of cameras and journalists as well as tanks, conducting interviews and documenting the horror. We are all too familiar with images of bombed mosques, masked men with rifles and Baghdad in flames. It can be easy to believe we know Iraq pretty well.

CHINA'S UNDERGROUND PUNKS

When communist China celebrated its 60th anniversary on October 1st, its national identity seemed, more than ever, refreshingly vulnerable to change. The internet has challenged the government's control of information. Consumer culture, fuelled by the ideals of Western capitalism, has become the lifestyle of choice.

VAN GOGH ON THE PAGE

Few painters do themselves a favour with their writing: it tends to be all puffed-up statements and angsty diaries. The exception is Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), who has become a kind of Platonic ideal of the artist, impoverished, misunderstood and triumphantly vindicated by posterity. His letters are tender, intelligent, even literary, vibrating with the sincerity of a man sweating for something pure, despite years of rejection and isolation.

THE Q&A: AIR, FRENCH DUO, ROMANTIC ADDICTS

It was a decade ago that Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, the French duo behind the band Air, overhauled the prevailing “urban music” landscape with their lush and influential album "Moon Safari".

FEMKE HIEMSTRA'S LOLLIPOP-LICKING POODLES

Femke Hiemstra, a Dutch artist, was "raised on liquorice and buttermilk," in her

MADELEINE BUNTING'S STORY OF ALL OF US

“The Plot” is the third book from Madeleine Bunting, the Guardian op-ed columnist. The titular plot is an acre of Yorkshire moorland where her father built a chapel as a haven from modernity’s encroachments.

HOT RIDES ON TWO WHEELS

Judging by the musky, sweaty smell wafting throughout the room at a recent Bicycle Film Festival screening, my guess is that many in attendance pedalled their way there.

FOXES, HEDGEHOGS AND AIRWAVES

Edward Carr ends his piece about polymaths with a plaintive observation:

Isaiah Berlin once divided thinkers into two types. Foxes, he wrote, know many things; whereas hedgehogs know one big thing. The foxes used to roam free across the hills. Today the hedgehogs rule.

AIR DRUMMING FROM THE HEART

Joining the ranks of activities that blur the line between sport and game--bowling, ping-pong, miniature golf--is air drumming, a thriving subculture documented prodigiously on YouTube and now the subject of a new comic film,  "Adventures of Power".

THE Q&A: MIGUEL CALDERÓN, ARTIST, PROVOCATEUR

Miguel Calderón was once called the “enfant terrible” of the Mexican art world. His provocative, tongue-in-cheek style has made him one of the country's most successful artists.