The Great Affair

Essays by, and conversations with, friends, acquaintances, and familiar strangers about how they’re finding their own place in the world—and also occasional reported dispatches.

Guest essay: After years imagining what her exit plan would look like, A Malaysian finally comes to terms with her choice to remain.
Q&A: A Syrian refugee journalist in Malaysia on piecing together a life for himself in exile in Kuala Lumpur, and reconciling his feelings for his…
Dispatch from Cambodia + Q&A: A journalist tells the story of the stateless Vietnamese forced to leave their floating homes on the Tonle Sap.
Q&A: An American acquaintance from my early backpacking days talks about everything that has taken him to his new home along Italy’s Via Francigena.
Dispatch from India: A journalist on how conflicted she felt when she considered donating part of her liver to her father—in a country where women face…
Guest essay: A Japanese essayist on negotiating deep-rooted traditions and her own wayward path, and how this shaped her relationship with her father.
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Guest essay: Weaving between past and present, vignettes from a life at sea about solitude and friendship by a travel writer who once taught English on…
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