“If they see you, they shoot”: An Interview with a North Korean Defector
‘If they see you, they shoot’. Jung tells me about the soldiers stationed every 60 metres along the border he crossed to leave North Korea. ‘My mother was very afraid to leave’ he says, and it is not hard to see why. I meet Jung in a coffee shop in the heart of Seoul, just […]
“Writing’s such a labour-intensive way of attention-seeking. It doesn’t really make any sense.”: An Interview with Will Self
First published in 2001 Ex-drug addict, novelist, short story writer, social commentator, journalist, permanent occupier of The Eye’s Pseud’s Corner, Julie Burchill and Bret Easton Ellis’ best mate, Tom Hill talkes to former Isis cartoonist and his bitter-sweet idol Will Self. Why shoul
New Bodies, Old Norms: Transsexuals in Iran
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are clearly defined oppositional concepts. Yet the country is also the world’s second most prolific practitioner of sex-reassignment surgeries. In 1985 Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa stating that transsexuals should be permitted to ch
Review: The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2015
For the next month, the top floors of The Photographers’ Gallery will be filled with an innovative series of photographs – pinned or projected onto walls, printed in books and pamphlets, animated in videos, illuminated in lightboxes and framed behind glass. The images engage with life in Soviet
“Bleached Beauty”: Shadeism in Indian Cinema
The Western perception of Indian Cinema generally amounts to one genre and one region: Bollywood, the colourful, all singing, all dancing export from Mumbai. But the first full-length Indian film in 1913 was not a Bollywood, but a Marathi production, and regional Marathi cinema has continued alongsi
Video: No Platform for Marine Le Penn?
The ISIS talks about the ‘no platform’ strategy with activists, students and politicians at Marie Le Pen’s Union Speech
“We marched out down to the Ashmolean where we burnt the proctors in effigy”: Tariq Ali on Student Activism and his time at Oxford (1983)
We are sitting in his study in Hornsey, the seat he hopes to contest as a member of the Labour party in the next General Election. At the moment, the problem of his membership in the party has been ‘shelved’ by the NEC who regard him, basically, as too far to the Left. Hornsey Constituency Labo
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Deep Web
The deep web is often cited as making up 99% of the Internet. It is understood to be a murky, metamorphosing nebula of information in which websites for contract killers and drug lords swirl malignantly. Impossible to navigate without the precise address of your destination, untamed by national laws