launch issue

Statemania Essay

Rahmane Idrissa

When the American Dream came to Africa

King of the Aral Sea Translation

Liu Zichao

A Central Asian travelogue, translated from Chinese by Dylan Levi King

Farewell to Podemos Memoir

Lilith Verstrynge

My decision to quit politics at 31

The Xi Jinping School of Journalism Memoir

Soyonbo Borjgin

The education and reeducation of a Mongolian reporter

Boyhood Memoir

Yuri Slezkine

What I learnt from the Soviet Adventure Library

We Have Talked Enough About Ourselves Essay

Benjamin Moser

How the marriage of American exceptionalism and liberal Zionism led to genocide

From the editors

The theme that unites our first stories is the passing of a grand illusion: the illusion that the whole world was on a trajectory, however delayed or disrupted, toward Western modernity. That history had a direction – and America stood at its terminus, beckoning others forward.

This illusion was never entirely believed, even by those who professed it most loudly. But it shaped the desires and aspirations of people everywhere; it constrained what could be imagined, demanded and built.

Today, the American model persists, but in a diminished form – as merely one option among others, and no longer inevitable. And this shift, from destiny to choice, from universal to particular, marks the true end of the illusion. What remains is not collapse but something far stranger.

The launch of Equator explores many facets of this transformation – how it feels, what it means, where it leads. Together, they map a world learning to imagine itself beyond the coordinates that once seemed permanent. This is where we begin.

‘He’s an African Leader’ Argument

Adom Getachew

Why my Ethiopian relatives voted for Trump

The Disaster Correspondent Argument

Lina Mounzer

Why I stopped explaining the Middle East to Americans

Clippings 1/3 

“On ‘Liberation Day’ – future historians may conclude – the hegemon himself tore through the mystique that shrouded his actions, even his transgressions, and broke the spell. American liberalism, it turns out, was the last illusion.”Rahmane Idrissa

“Lebanon fares better than most Arab countries in the mainstream press, both in the amount of attention it is paid, and in the backhanded compliments strewn piteously its way, compliments akin to telling a fat girl, ‘Oh, what a shame, you have such a pretty face.’”Lina Mounzer

“The establishment can resort to bullying and slander; they can call the cops on their own children, but their cause, the cause of Zionism, is dead, and the decent part of the Jewish people will shun the houses of ill repute over which this establishment presides.”Benjamin Moser

Two Years of Genocide Dispatch

Sondos Sabra

In Gaza City, people are slowly returning, pitching their tents over the ashes of homes

Beyond the Apocalypse Argument

Amitav Ghosh

How visions of catastrophe shape the ‘climate solutions’ imposed by aid agencies

When Your Father Dies of AIDS Fiction

Oksana Vasyakina

An excerpt from the novel Steppe, translated from Russian by Elina Alter

upcoming events

Bangalore Literature Festival

Freedom Park, Bengaluru, India

The Hindu Lit for Life

Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall, Chennai, India

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I Left My Sorrows in the Laundry Basin Poetry

Haidar Al-Ghazali

Translated from Arabic by Omar Berrada

29.10.2025

The Coast Photo Essay

Sohrab Hura

All photographs from Sohrab Hura’s series The Coast (2013–2019).

→Sohrab Hura is a photographer based in New Delhi.

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