The Bells of Old Tokyo by Anna Sherman A lot of us who devour media like things to be put in brackets: as a music-lover, I need to know what sub-genre of heavy metal an album comfortably sits in before I hear it. But life doesn’t exist in as vacuum, or a series of vacuums. And so, it is very possible – refreshingly, exhilaratingly...
The world is changing, and conversations around both travel and mental health are changing with it. In the West, openness about depression and anxiety is ever-increasing for women and men – right now, 3.4% of the world’s population have been diagnosed with depression, but that number is likely to rise as more and more of us are willing...
Mental health is very much a catch-all term in the same way that physical health is. Just as physical health issues range from cramps to cancer, mental health issues range from sorrow to schizophrenia. We all feel; we all have mental health, and so we all get mental health issues to some degree or another. Therefore, finding ways to cope...
A.N. Devers is a fierce woman. She’s a writer with an upcoming debut novel (Train), a prolific journalist who’s been featured in The New Yorker and The Guardian, and she’s also the proprietor of The Second Shelf, a bookstore in the heart of Soho. And she’s also super fun and fierce on Twitter. The Second Shelf itself has been open only...
Sleepless Night, written by Margriet de Moor | Translated from the Dutch by David Doherty “The night is at its coldest now. I do not need a clock to tell me how deep the darkness is. I can hear it in the cold.” We are often told the right ways to love and be loved: what our expectations of love should be and how we ourselves should...
20 Unique Things to do in Norway’s Capital, Oslo Oslo has a lot to be proud of! The city won the European Green Capital in 2019 and it made the National Geographic Traveller (UK)’s Cool List 2019. Oslo is one of those cities that you’re not entirely sure what you’re going to get up to then the city unfurls before you and you realise that...
Tiffany Tsao is a writer and translator. She is the author of Under Your Wings (forthcoming with Atria Books in the US as The Majesties) and the Oddfits fantasy series. Her translations from Indonesian to English include Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s wonderful poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus, Dee Lestari’s novel Paper Boats, and...
A Devil Comes to Town written by Paulo Maurensig | Translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel “Each time we pick up a pen, we are preparing a ritual for which two candles should always be lit: one white and one black.” As a reader, I’ve been harbouring an impatient lust for some quality contemporary writing which captures the...
Easy Steps to Start Learning a Language From Home Learning a new language is equal parts exciting and daunting. Exciting because it gives us access to new cultures, makes travelling more fun and less stressful, and it exercises our brains better than pretty much anything else. And daunting because it’s time-consuming, stressful, and can...
Written by Rania Mamoun | Translated from the Sudanese by Elisabeth Jaquette I admittedly went into reading Thirteen Months of Sunrise with high expectations; I haven’t been this excited for a collection since the Iraq +100 (also, coincidently, by Comma Press) and I’ll start this off by saying that it absolutely did not disappoint. This...
