Reportage - Five Dials

‘Climate change is us.The sixth extinction is us. We are at the heart of all of these issues.’

Julian Hoffman on the state of the world

Julian Hoffman’s latest book, Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, is a cry to see, to examine what we still have, to appreciate what is quickly di... Read more

We’re Not in Tokoroa Any More

by Stella Duffy

There is a rugby match today, All Blacks versus Lions. I will make cheese scones so I can eat them with a beer. It is a way of watching the rugby with both of m... Read more

‘How could this possibly be mysterious? Where could this take us?’

A conversation with Tana French

'I’ve looked at criminal investigations through a detective’s eyes six times. But there are a lot of other people involved. There are witnesses, there are victims, there are suspects, there are perpetrators...'

Plainly Repulsive

The more I think about eggs and their textures, the more horrified I am by them. By Lara Williams

I used to work with a girl who told me there was a finite amount of time that could elapse between her starting to eat something and becoming attuned to the tex... Read more

Space

Paul Ewen accompanies a friend home

Yes, he emphasised, a little country; and with inhabitants so much limited in number it was unlikely you would even hear them rattle on any occasion when the Al... Read more

Camping In Our House

Amidst the rubble and broken glass, John Ewen learns to go without

Some people felt that the earthquakes had shaken Nature into being more productive.

Shakespeare would have done well in any generation

Raymond Chandler to Jamie Hamilton

‘I don’t know why the hell I write so many letters,’ Raymond Chandler once wrote, in a letter. ‘I guess my mind is just too active for its own good!’ Chandler d... Read more

American Fall

Writers reflect on September 2018, and touring during the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court

Preti Taneja, Jennifer Croft, Chika Unigwe, Shobha Rao, Danielle Evans, Sarah Weinman, Sharmila Sen, Diana Henderson, Jeanne McCulloch Preti Taneja I arrive... Read more

An Album Can Last a Day

by Sam Byers

It doesn’t so much begin as swoop into land: thirty seconds of silence followed by the gathering swell of sputtering static and a sighing, weary chorus of what ... Read more

Social media is a kind of refuge. It’s a refuge from dealing with the more enlivening conflicts within one’s real life.

Adam Phillips in conversation with Nicholas Barrett

In his 2016 biography of Sigmund Freud, Adam Phillips describes the development of psychoanalysis as an attempt by the secular Jews of Vienna to recreate the ex... Read more

Sinatra Sang in Sentences

by Joe Moran

The style guides say: keep your sentences short. Write cleanly, cut as many words as you can, and don’t overburden your reader’s short-term memory by delaying t... Read more

Who Rules the World

An appreciation of Noam Chomsky’s endless factcheck of American power

‘If you remember Chomsky is relevant, that his thinking might have shaped you in some dusty moment in the past, go back to the text.’