Our Monstrous Ideas Translation
Natalia Ginzburg
In these two essays, newly translated for Equator, the Italian writer articulates a powerful moral vision of what it means to belong, and to whom we owe our compassion
Gaza Notes Artist Project
Nan Goldin with David Sherman
Scenes from the destruction of a people
The Demand for Silence Essay
Yevgenia Belorusets
Everyone wants Ukraine to be a nation of heroes – but no one wants to talk about the violence required to sustain armed resistance to Russia’s invasion
The Makers of Modern China Translation
Zheng Xiaoqiong
For many years, Zheng Xiaoqiong has collected the stories of the workers whose migration to Guangdong powered China’s manufacturing revolution
Surrealism Against Fascism Essay
Naomi Klein
A century ago, artists who survived the trenches captured humanity’s capacity for destruction. What can they teach us about confronting the far-right in a new age of 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.
Caste and Chappals Translation
Chandu Maheriya
What leather footwear reveals about discrimination against Dalits
The Xi Jinping School of Journalism Memoir
Soyonbo Borjgin
The education and reeducation of a Mongolian reporter
Inside the BBC’s Gaza Fiasco Reportage
Daniel Trilling
How the world’s most trusted media organisation fell apart
Clippings 1/3
Statemania Essay
Rahmane Idrissa
When the American Dream came to Africa
Pity and Fear Essay
Hisham Matar
What images of cruelty reveal about the limits of power
Farewell to Podemos Memoir
Lilith Verstrynge
My decision to quit politics at 31
When Your Father Dies of AIDS Fiction
Oksana Vasyakina
An excerpt from the novel Steppe
Two Poems Poetry
Michael Hofmann
29.10.2025
The Coast Photo Essay
Sohrab Hura
All photographs from Sohrab Hura’s series The Coast (2013–2019).
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