Essay Archives

THE CURRENCY IN Australia is comedy. We rely on it, we use it in every situation, we convert everything...

WE ARE IN an era in which the governments or cultural authorities (elected or self-appointed) are engaged in defining...

By Geremie Barmé

JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE very aware of their densely layered past and how much of it informs the present, so...

MOST WAR MEMORIALS are made from stone. This one is made from paper: ten original sketches drawn in ink,...

By Rachel Buchanan

What I am now is an interesting deformity. I am not Asian and never will be. Even if I...

By Jane Camens

I WOULD NOT call Pasay a slum. Calling or not calling Pasay City a slum would assume the ability...

AUSTRALIANS ARE EAGER to learn ever more about the Australian side of the Gallipoli conflict, but not the Turkish...

EVERY PICTURE TELLS a story. Sometimes what happens around a picture can be as telling as the picture itself....

By Nicholas Jose

XIEZI (WEDGE) 001:[i] On the night of July 16, 2007, I received an email in Chinese from River, a...

By Ouyang Yu

I WAS MORE tired than I'd ever been when the fleet of black Volkswagens arrived. We watched them pull...

By Michael Wesley

We had come down now to the warm south coast, to a small fishing village which I shall call...

By Glyn Davis

A human being survives by his ability to forget.– Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma TalesIN THE PAST decade or so, no...

By Gideon Haigh