How far would you go to avoid bad luck? Read the new story by Melissa Ren to find out.

Who are those next-door neighbors on the left? Why won’t they have anything to do with us? A campus story by Mosa-ab Z. Mangurun.

On the cusp of the Year of the Snake, Ng Yi-Sheng reviews five works of speculative fiction that trace the journeys of the Chinese diaspora from Singapore to Canada.

What does V. S. Naipaul mean when he describes the Indian way of seeing as defective? Utkarsh Adhrit finds the answer in Naipaul himself in this essay about embarrassment, colonialism, and history.

The violence of unwanted motherhood. Elise J. Choi reviews Lojman, by Ebru Ojen.

With his poems on consumption and fear, Christian Hanz Lozada lays out a powerful three-course meal using ingredients from a caged crocodile, an insulted street food vendor, and a supermarket aisle.

A relationship with an electric character lands a university student into a startling new world in which the typical rules don't apply, in this story from Michael Balili.

What do a pearl, a bell and a dropped pipe tell us about colonial violence? Three poems from Kapil Kachru.

In times of political upheaval, what are we touched – or left untouched – by? Matt Reeck’s translations of Leeladhar Jagoori show us what happens when opposites collide.

A sharp new story by Christian Yeo interrogates the state of surveillance.

As the new year beckons, Ng Yi-Sheng reviews five books, whose topics range from the genocide in Palestine to the Sino-Japanese War in Chungking, that remind us of the moral necessity of hope.

In this essay on the films of Iranian director Alireza Khatami, Robert Hirschfield isolates the qualities and influences that distinguish this body of work.

Ashley Marilynne Wong reviews Elaine Chiew’s novel The Light Between Us.