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'Despite some reversals in the Ukraine war, it is possible—outside of the frightening prospect of nuclear escalation—that the conflict will continue over the northern hemisphere winter, possibly for much longer. While many continue to cheer it on, the question of how to end the conflict and resolve the multiple crises that are a result of it (energy and food shortages, inflation, immigration) will become more pressing, even to those who view it in Manichean terms. At this point one could ask, what would an end to the war, let alone some sort of ‘victory’, actually look like? And what reconfigurations of power will emerge out of this multifaceted crisis? It’s clear that Europe will be substantially changed, and that the positions of NATO, the EU and dominant countries such as Germany and France will be altered at the same time as far-right alliances are coming to the fore in Italy and Sweden, joining Hungary in spoiling the technocratic dream of much of Euro-democracy. And what implication does all this have for possible future wars? What rough beast will emerge from the chaos?' (Editorial introduction)
Contents
* Contents derived from the 2022 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
'1922 saw the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. But in the same year, far from the famous Anglo-Euro-American sites of literary modernism in its annus mirabilis, the emblematically countermodern modernist D. H. Lawrence was in Australia. It was, he thought, ‘the most democratic place [he had] ever seen’—and ‘the more [he saw] of democracy the more [he] dislik[ed] it’. This extreme political reaction resulted in a novel: spending most of his six weeks in Australia in the seaside town of Thirroul, just north of Wollongong, Lawrence wrote a long book called Kangaroo and published it early the following year. It is a strange, somewhat autofictional, almost plotless work, and for a long time was only taken seriously for its mesmeric descriptions of Australian nature, with justly anthologised paragraphs about yellow wattle (‘as if angels had flown right down out of the softest gold regions of heaven to settle here’) or shark fins (‘like small, hard sails of hell boats’). But on the occasion of its centenary the novel ought to be read as well at the level of ideas. The book, in fact, sums up to being one of the most compelling and prognostic critiques ever made of democracy in Australia, and for that reason alone it should not be allowed to drop out of the memory of those of us uneasy with the defaulty democratic status quo.' (Introduction)
'In 1995 I drove along Turkey’s green Black Sea coast with my dad, as far as the Georgian border. We had borrowed a friend’s Renault, driving on the right side of the road and changing gears with the wrong hand.' (Introduction)
