Review
Superman Was Born Woke
Superman’s real power has perhaps never been X-ray vision or being faster than a speeding bullet. It may rather have been the character's overall consistent penchant for social justice. Even when it wasn’t — or isn’t — popular.
What Zionism Wrought
A review of recent works on the Gaza war by Peter Beinart, Avi Shlaim and Pankaj Mishra explores how they converge on a single interpretation, long argued for by Palestinian scholars like Rashid Khalidi: The crisis is not an aberration, but the end point of a century-long project.
How South Korea’s Directors Took Their Discontent Global
Contemporary South Korean film and television present the capitalist system that emerged following the peninsula’s war over 70 years ago as fundamentally broken, generating class divisions that cannot be penetrated through perseverance or hard work. Their message is uniform: Either we destroy it, or it destroys us.
What Kash Patel’s Children’s Books Reveal About the MAGA Movement
The head of the FBI, Kash Patel, is also a children’s author. His “Plot Against the King Trilogy” is surprisingly revealing about the mindset and motivations of a man who now has the power to root out what he sees as America’s enemy within — the so-called “Deep State.”
How African Leaders’ Memoirs Rewrite History
Political memoirs can seem more like propaganda than honest reflection, raising questions about their authenticity and how they shape our understanding of history. That of former Nigerian military leader Ibrahim Babangida is no exception, highlighting its author’s achievements while downplaying his mistakes.
Sami Michael Broke New Ground by Centering Arabs in His Hebrew Novels
The novelist Sami Michael died last year aged 97. Born and raised in Baghdad, he introduced characters previously marginalized or omitted in Hebrew literature: immigrants, Mizrahim, women and especially Arabs. His portrayals are sympathetic but unsparing, and his writing tackled issues central to Israeli society that were previously cloaked in silence.
Contemporary Fiction’s Responses to a Changing India
In recent years, several contemporary Indian novelists have written in direct response to ongoing sociopolitical changes in India and painted an intricate picture of what it means to be young and disenchanted in a deeply polarized country.