
We Do Not Part is the latest book by Korean writer Han Kang, who won the Nobel prize in literature in 2024. The book begins in fragments that ebb between dark dream, waking nightmare and memories of how the books...

Heres how the story of the Taung Child is usually told: In 1924 an Australian anthropologist and anatomist, Raymond Dart, acquired a block of calcified sediment from a limestone quarry in South Africa. He painstakingly...

How Putin, Xi and now Trump are ushering in a new imperial age
Over the past few weeks the new US president, Donald Trump, has repeatedly claimed that the United States should take back the Panama Canal and that it should assume control of Greenland one way or another. He has talked...
Friday essay: a reinvention of self – the pleasure of literary journeys
Penguin In the hiatus that was COVID lockdown, the novelty of staying put had a peculiar grace and delight. To limit ones trajectory to five kilometres meant homing in on the small and the local: the seasonal repetitions...
‘A relentlessly dull world’ – the case for adding more colour to NZ’s grey prisons
Prisons are not colourful places. Typically, they are grey or some variation of a monochrome colour scheme. But increasingly, such a limited palette is being questioned for its impact on health and rehabilitation. As the...

Rebels are continuing their march in eastern Congo – what is their long-term goal?
In late January, a rebel group that has long caused mayhem in the sprawling African nation of Democratic Republic of Congo took control of Goma, a major city of about 2 million people on the border with Rwanda in the...

DRC conflict: talks have failed to bring peace. Is it time to try sanctions?
The crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) escalated at the end of January 2025 when Goma, the capital of the province of North Kivu, fell to Rwanda-backed M23 rebels. The civilian population is paying a...