The Burning Origin

At once a subversive autobiography of a mercurial woman and a mesmerizing history of the body as a site of resistance to power.

“I bite my friends to heal them.”—Diogenes the Cynic, c. 350 BCE

From a Roman amphitheater where 4th century martyrs are fed to wild beasts to the S&M leather bars of New York in the 1970s, this sinuous and illuminating book by novelist and cultural critic Fernanda Eberstadt explore the lives of uncommonly brave men and women—saints, philosophers, artists--who have used their own wounded or stigmatized bodies to challenge society’s mores and entrenched power structures.

The Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes who lived “a dog’s life,” sleeping, teaching, having sex in the public square; Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, two early Christian martyrs; twentieth-century prophets of bodily freedom like filmmaker-poet Pier Paolo Pasolini and philosopher Michel Foucault; Russian punk feminist group Pussy Riot; the political artist Piotr Pavlensky, who nailed his scrotum to the pavement of Red Square to protest Vladimir Putin’s tyranny; these are the outrageous, uncommon, but deeply committed activists featured through original interviews and careful case studies in Eberstadt’s immensely readable book, which is part political treatise, part manifesto, part memoir.

Running through her narrative of the Body Militant is Eberstadt’s own story and the story of her mother, a New York writer and glamor figure of the 1960s, whose illness-scarred body first led Eberstadt to seek connections between beauty, belief, and the truths taught through the body.

Eberstadt asks crucial questions for our time: what drives certain individuals to risk pain, disgrace, even death, in the name of freedom? And, what can we learn from their example to become braver ourselves?

From prize-winning author Su Bristow comes a fascinating coming-of-age novel about magic and the choices that define future generations.

It’s 1959. To eight-year-old Felicity—who lives on a dying farm in England—the fairies in the woods have much more to offer than the people in her everyday life. As she becomes more rooted in their world, she learns that their magic is far from safe. Their queen, Elfrida, offers Felicity a gift. But fairy bargains are never what they seem.

As an adult, Felicity leaves for university. Unfortunately, books are not her only company at school: Elfrida and Hobb—the queen’s constant companions—wield the ability to appear at any time, causing havoc in her new friendships and love life. Desperate, Felicity finally begins to explore the true nature of the Fair Folk and their magic. Her ally, the folklorist Professor Edgerley, asks, “What do they want from you?” The answer lies in the distant past, and in the secrets of her own family.

As the consequences of the “gift” play out, Felicity must draw on her courage to confront Elfrida, and make the right choice. Interwoven with traditional stories and striking characters, The Fair Folk poses questions about how we care for our children, our land, and our love-hate relationship with what we desire most.

Fully-illustrated, The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world.  

IN THIS VOLUME: Paolo Macry on Naples’ “monarch mayors”・Francesco Abazia on the influence of the US Army’s presence on Neapolitan popular music・Cristina Napolitano on the Neapolitan diaspora, and what it means to come back・Gianni Montieri on the city’s passion for football・Alessandra Coppola on the cult of the young victims of the Camorra, or the police, and much more… 

In recent years, Naples has been the subject of countless books, films and TV series, making it even more difficult to imagine a Neapolitan normality, if it exists at all.  As Naples becomes the most filmed city in Italy, where to look for the ordinary, the average? Maybe we need to "go up" to Vomero, a neighborhood considered almost alien to the city, middle class, homogeneous, peaceful? A reality in sharp contrast with the over-the-top life of the historic centre, crossed as it is by a thousand stratifications - architectural, historical and social. And yet even there we find an alternative reading: the city as a model of coexistence between ancient and modern.    

While some areas have been waiting for decades for much promised redevelopment, others have benefited from cutting-edge projects with far-reaching positive impact, representing a Naples that attracts talent, exports models, and colonizes instead of being colonized.  

Fully-illustrated, The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world.

IN THIS VOLUME: Lovestruck in Barcelona by Enrique Vila-Matas • Supermanza 503 by Gabi Martinez • The Great Barcelona Novel by Miqui Otero • plus: the complex legacy of the Olympics; the future of Catalonia; the radical left and the once best in the world soccer team; an endless subway line, and much more…

Thirty years after the 1992 Olympics, which redefined the city’s contemporary identity and changed its destiny, The Passenger travels to Barcelona to understand the history and future of one of the cradles of political, cultural, and urban change in Europe.

From the debate about the impact of mass tourism to the search of new and sustainable models of economic and social development; from the eternal rivalry with Madrid to the rediscovery of the city’s rich tradition of political activism: this volume of The Passenger offers a panoramic view of a city striving to trace a new path forward out of the current crisis, and find a way of life centered on the well-being of its citizens.

Fully-illustrated, The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world.

IN THIS VOLUME: The mass is ended by Catherine Dunne and Caelainn Hogan・ The Way Back by Colum McCann・A Trip to Westeros by Mark O’Connell・plus: life on the margins of two unions and right in the middle of Brexit, making war on each other for 30 years while playing on the same national rugby team, emigrating to the great enemy or transforming the country one referendum at a time, digging peat bogs and building cottages, talking of the sea in Gaelic, and much more….. 

The Passenger sets off to discover a land full of charm and conflict, a country that in just a few decades has gone from being a poor, semi-theocratic society to a thriving economy free from the influence of the Catholic Church. 

With the 1998 peace agreements, the conflict between nationalists and unionists seemed, if not resolved, at least dormant.  But Brexit—with the ambiguous position it leaves Northern Ireland in—caused old tensions to resurface. The Passenger explores their ramifications in politics, society, culture, and sport.   

Meanwhile, south of the border, epochal transformation has seen a deeply patriarchal, conservative society give space to diversity, the only country in the world to enshrine gay marriage in law through a referendum.  And there’s a whole other Ireland abroad, an Irish diaspora that looks to the old country with new-found pride but doesn’t forget the ugliness it fled from.   

Memory and identity intertwine with the transformations—from globalisation to climate change—that are remodelling the Irish landscape, from the coastal communities under threat of disappearing together with the Irish language fishermen use to talk about the sea, while inland the peat bogs, until recently important sources of energy and jobs, are being abandoned. From Catherine Dunne to Colum McCann, Mark O’Connell and Sara Baume, Irish (but not only) writers and journalists tell of a country striving to stay a step ahead of time. 

Fully-illustrated, The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world.

IN THIS VOLUME: When the Circus Came to Town: The Resurrection of Potsdamer Platz by Peter Schneider・Berlin Suite by Cees Nooteboom・Tempelhof: A Field of Dreams by Vincenzo Latronico・plus: the controversial reconstruction of a Prussian castle, Berlin’s most transgressive sex club and its disappearing traditional pubs, a green urban oasis, suburban neo-Nazis, North Vietnamese in the East, South Vietnamese in the West, techno everywhere and much more...

“Berlin is too big for Berlin” is the curious title of a book by the flaneur Hanns Zischler, who joked about the low population density of a city so spread-out and polycentric—one of the reasons why it still inspires feelings of freedom and space. But the phrase also carries a symbolic, broader meaning: how can a single city encompass and sustain such a weighty mythology as that of contemporary Berlin, “the capital of cool”?

In order to find out, it is necessary to travel to the 1990s, the origins of today’s Berlin, when time seemed to have stopped. The scars of a century of war were still visible everywhere: coal stoves, crumbling buildings, desolate minimarts, not a working buzzer or elevator. To visit the city then was a hallucinatory experience, a simultaneous journey into the past and into the future. The city’s youth seemed to have appropriated—and turned into a positive—the famous phrase pronounced by Karl Scheffler at the beginning of the 20th century: “Berlin is a place doomed to always become, never be.”

The abandoned ruins, the hidden gems found at the flea market, the illegal basement raves are a thing of the past. The era of Berlin as a site of urban archeology is over. Almost all the damaged buildings have been repaired, squatters have been removed, the shops selling East German furniture have closed down. Without its wounds, the landscape of the city is perhaps less striking but more solid, stronger. Even the city’s inhabitants have lost some of their melancholia, their romantic and self-destructive streak: today you can even find people who come to Berlin to actually work, not just to “create” or idle their days away. Yet, Berlin remains a youthful city that doesn’t cling to its “poor but sexy” past, whose only sacrosanct principles are an uncompromising multiculturalism and the belief that its future is yet to be written. To quote someone who knows the city well, Berlin is and always will be “pure potential.”