In the early 1990s, when the West genuinely believed that history had found its direction, Samuel Huntington’s theory of the “waves of democratization” sounded almost like a natural description of the world. It rested on the assumption that democracy advances in tides: it…

I wrote this piece back in 2009, in the aftermath of what I can only describe as a silent collapse — the kind that happens not with drama or disaster, but with quiet, daily erosion. At the time, I was a middle-aged father, freshly separated, living abroad, and raising two…

I am the happiest man in the world. I know I’m talking nonsense – but I don’t care, not as long as my Eva is beside me. I’ve got the most wonderful woman, earned her with sweat and hardship, so don’t tell me to knock on wood. When a man has been through stories like mine, he…

After surviving the Ghost Forest, Anne — still Firecurl, still fierce — awakens to find her journey far from over.