Mid-Week Links: 04 Dec 2024
+ my fav book of the year 🙌🏾
Welcome to my mid-week link round up!
Blimey, it’s properly December now. I’ll probably go on break from the 20th or so and come back early Jan inshallah.
I’ve got a BUMPER edition of links for you this week! Dense, thought provoking, rich - ENJOY!
Reads:
My book of the year? Brotherless Night, by VV Ganeshananthan. On the horrific civil war and ultimate genocide in Sri Lanka, through the eyes of a young medical student. Detailing the impossibility of such conflict, the book is an ‘unforgettable account of a country and a family coming undone’. I wept, numerous times, and read it in one, long, moving sitting. Brotherless Night won the Women’s Prize, and I’m so glad it did. Please, read it.
‘The most fulfilled people I know tend to have two traits. They’re insatiably curious—about new ideas, experiences, information and people.1 And they seem to exist in a state of perpetual, self-inflicted unhappiness.’ - Celine Nguyen on ‘divine discontent’. I enjoyed this quite a lot, and it has loads of great links to other pieces - enjoy the rabbit hole!
I feel ambivalent about Californian author Joan Didion. I think she has a few wonderful essays and a smooth, enviable writing style, but not much she writes about matters to me. That said, I did enjoy this interview with the author of the new book, Didion & Babtiz.
A lockdown-era essay on gossip, and how its utility or pleasure may depend on understanding ‘the ambiguity of people and the things they do’. In person, this is possible, but online gossip takes on a different form, ‘simplistic and overzealous moralism’. Rachel Connolly is always brilliant on such topics, and I enjoyed this throwback.
Brilliant long read by
, whose books I’ve not read but whose essays I thoroughly enjoy. This one is on reading Russian literature during the Ukrainian war, on novels and imperialism, on cognitive dissonances. The piece also led me to this article, ‘Can the Post-Soviet Think? On Coloniality of Knowledge, External Imperial and Double Colonial Difference’. I’m constantly struck by the similarities - and differences - between post-colonial discussions as they relate to Western European imperialism versus the Soviet, or Russian context. I thought about this often when visiting Lithuania, and it’s a theme I am sure to return to (inshallah)…
Watch: Conclave
I’m calling it. This is my favourite film of the year.
The pope is dead. The throne is vacant. CONCLAVE follows one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events – selecting the new Pope.
Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) directs this tense political thriller that has some of the best dialogue, score and imagery I have seen for some time. But it is the performance of Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence that brings it all together. I dunno, I reckon Oscar noms are in order - and I don’t usually care for such things!
Listen: Has the world failed the people of Sudan?
An excellent line up on this Aljazeera podcast:
Kholood Khair, Founding Director, Confluence Advisory (who was on the panel with me at the Brown University conference).
Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director, Humanitarian Research Lab, Yale School of Public Health (who has been doing some excellent open source work verifying attacks on the ground).
Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation (everyone who knows about Sudan knows about Alex de Waal).
As a reminder, this link round-up will go behind a paywall in the new year (inshallah). Plenty of time to upgrade - but of course, the Sunday newsletter will remain available for all. Have the best week, lovelies!
Best,
Yassmin
Thank you for your Brotherless Night recommendation; “A masterpiece of historical fiction” V. V. Ganeshananthan is a literary powerhouse !