In 2010, Verso published a new edition of John Berger’s 1975 book A Seventh Man. Here’s the first sentence of Berger’s introduction to the re-issue: “It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.”
Some time back, as the month of July came to a close, two politicians from Tamil Nadu got into a fight at the Delhi airport. They were waiting to board their flight back to their home state, and their war
Sometimes censorship is a collective effort. It is not always imposed top-down by an all-powerful State; it can also be the result of a concerted push by concerned citizens. And even where Indian culture is concerned, censorship is not
After the horrific Orlando shootings, which left 50 dead, my Facebook feed was filled with posts about the massacre. This was hardly a time for levity, but many of the posts linked to a humor website. Not just any website,
Is he for real? This is the question I keep on asking myself as I watch and re-watch the videos of Pakistani YouTube sensation Taher Shah, and pore over his website. Perhaps you’ve already forgotten Shah; the viral fever he
On 3 April, newspapers around the world published their first reports based on their investigation of the Panama Papers, an enormous leak of 11.5 million documents. The leak details the workings of Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that specialises
The US presidential election season has brought with it a slew of articles claiming that social media will revolutionise the 2016 campaign. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram: these are now being used by the candidates and their supporters to appeal
I really wanted to write a contrarian column this month, upending the critical consensus on the two movies I was going to review. Now, having seen both the movies, I can only conclude that, sometimes, the critics reach a consensus
As I write these lines (in late January, if you’re keeping track), a group of armed right-wing militants is beginning the fourth week of its occupation of a government-owned wildlife refuge in Oregon, in the northwestern United States. Drawn from
The Internet has not been kind to Pahlaj Nihalani. As chief of the censor board, Nihalani has been at the center of controversy after controversy. First, it was his very appointment to that position, which was seen as one