My latest review for @bookforum.bsky.social is also out now. In it, I think alongside Namwali Serpell’s resplendently rigorous new book on Toni Morrison about the last greatest living writer’s legacy and how we’re meant to read her.

immense relief of revisiting a text that needs finishing after a term-long break and realising it was going somewhere

One of the families who had to relocate to a hotel after the gas leak explosions here in Utrecht yesterday had just arrived from Gaza. Please consider helping them cover the extra costs: gofund.me/50ba61456

Please join us to welcome Kim Hyesoon to NL. Her first stop is at @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social for a special event on translation and transcultural/multispecies solidarities. Free & open to the public.

Incredibly nice to have my Publishing class interrupted by an email announcing a book contract :)))

I love this essay so so much (Sophie Corser in @thepigsback.bsky.social)

Happy publication day to one of my dearest friends!! Luna Sabastian’s ’Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva’ is out now, a truly extraordinary book. I’m so glad I got to witness the entire journey - including actual joint research trips to Berlin and Delhi! www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Das ist grammatik. Es ermöglicht das springen von X nach Y nach Z. Es produziert sätze, die so mehrfach falsch sind, das man sie nicht widerlegen kann. Es schleift ein, automatisiert, und laugt die kritik aus. Es sind templates zur unablässigen produktion, wie bei memes

Reading Rooms at the British Library are closed *all week* because so many of its workers refuse to work for pitiful wages in a contemptuously authoritarian and obliviously managed environment. We need leaders who get it and are big enough to sort it out! It’s a mess and a disgrace. Lift it up!!

Happy publication day to one of my dearest friends!! Luna Sabastian’s ’Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva’ is out now, a truly extraordinary book. I’m so glad I got to witness the entire journey - including actual joint research trips to Berlin and Delhi! www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Today, university staff and students in the Netherlands are on strike! We protest against continuing budget cuts of over 1bn euros by a cabinet that has been voted out of power over a month ago.

Huge joy getting to see two dear colleagues launch their books tonight! Get your hands (and university library orders) on 1. Femi Eromosele’s ‘Mad Fictions: Psychiatry, Disability and the Politics of Mental Distress in African Literature’ www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/... and on…

can hardly imagine anything more tedious than the discussions about whether the most recent discussions about whether Germany is fucked have been very good or very bad

The first of several copies I’ll be gifting in Cairo to those who generously shared stories with me over several years that made this book possible.

one small lesson to take away from the crumbling HE sector, btw, is that there is no such thing as meritocracy here and the only thing that matters is doing work that is meaningful to you and the people you care about and to make friends and collaborators in the process

Mit seinem Besuch bei Benjamin Netanyahu schreibt Friedrich Merz Geschichte: Erstmals seit Gründung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland trifft sich ein Bundeskanzler mit einer Person, die vom Internationalen Strafgerichtshof in Den Haag wegen mutmaßlicher Kriegsverbrechen per Haftbefehl gesucht wird.

Kim Hyesoon in Dutch, translated by the wonderful brilliant generous @marwinvos.bsky.social in @groene.nl . KHS will be visiting NL in January, with various programs at @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social Writers Unlimited Festival & Perdu 💫

The Gehry buildings in my hometown bring me joy whenever I see them

2 more weeks of 12-hour teaching

Dismayed that Steely Dan has not made it into my top artists but delighted with all of my songs of the month 🏆

what's the best thing I can read to understand the whole deal with medieval allegory?

Denmark is dismantling it’s letterboxes because the post there will no longer be responsible for sending letters as of 2026 😭

the one lasting impact of One Battle After Another is that it’s turned me into a Steely Dan guy

teaching Mahmoud Darwish's poetry alongside Refqa Abu-Remaileh's digital atlas of Palestinian literature this week - it really is an extraordinary publication

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, because my book is out now, fresh off the press! Happy book birthday to “Literary Autobiography: Contemporary Novelists and their Self-Representations” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) 📕🎉! doi.org/10.1007/978-... @hss.springernature.com

Seeing so many books I’d like to pitch reviews for but I am NOT ALLOWED (by myself)

Wah how pathetic

Not a particularly original observation but Liadan Ní Chuinn is the real deal huh

Mickey Mouse was a tout

This is the first time in forever that I have slept through from ten to seven???? All it takes is a wonderful evening with friends and a sacrificial turkey and my insomnia is healed!!

I wrote an essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social about what I learned about close reading when I taught at West Virginia University www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

Feeling honored and grateful to receive the Best Article Prize this year! 💙 Huge thanks to the wonderful editorial team from Environmental Humanities journal for their support in publishing this work. Feeling so motivated to dive even deeper into many waters of the Blue Humanities! 🌊✨ #envhum

Sad that I couldn’t go to see Achille Mbembe talk at Utrecht University last night, but delighted to hear that his answer to a question about his 2020 ”excommunication“ from Germany was to just laugh

In a bumper week for publications, I am also delighted to have my chapter "Familial Trauma and Queer Sexual Catharsis in Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart" published in the collection Queer Trauma Across Borders, edited by Anchit Sathi. link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

On 29 Nov, I’ll be interviewing the Palestinian-Syrian poet Ghayath Almadhoun & his Dutch translator Djûke Poppinga. Every day is a day of international solidarity with the Palestinian people. @actionbooks.bsky.social @uitgjurgenmaas.bsky.social www.wintertuinfestival.nl/en/blog/prog...

lecture slides for tomorrow will mainly consist of photos I’ve taken at the Etel Adnan exhibition in Düsseldorf

Exciting news ~ TL/TH in book form, from Peninsula Press in 2026✨ Too Little/Too Hard (edited by Lucy Mercer and Livia Franchini), a collection of essays from some of the most exciting contemporary writers about literature, work, time, and value (shipping May) peninsulapress.co.uk/products/202...

through week 2 of this now, in which we looked at short stories of displacement in the contexts of Partition, the Nakba, the Holocaust, and the Black diaspora and the students gave such insightful close and comparative readings

I make jokes about how often Sarkozy publishes memoirs, but here he is publishing his "prison memoir" (after serving only 20 days of a five year sentence)

I got Asako Yuzuki’s Butter in the hope for fun murder mystery and food but it’s gone from supposedly critical but intensely detailed depictions of diet culture and tradwifery to therapy speak 🥲

Dont wanna jinx it but wanted to note especially with so much doom in academe, but my teaching has been so incredibly fulfilling and excellent this year; these kids really are all right.

Arthur Russell forever m.youtube.com/watch?v=btXK...

Honestly v lucky, this. The city recently renovated one of my least favourite crossroads, seemingly around the principle “now bikes have all the rights and cars have none :)“, and it’s great

Solidarity with all striking colleagues in the UK

always odd to recognise other swimmers in the bike parking lot. feels wrong to see them fully dressed

On Tues, Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah attempted to fly to London to attend two conferences. He was stopped by authorities and told he could not travel. It's been almost 2 months since Alaa was pardoned. It's time for him to be allowed to travel too www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Four hours of seminar teaching on four hours of sleep (insomnia, baby) made energising by engaged students, we give thanks

Gorki theatre cancelling premiere of Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail due to “dynamics and differences within the cast and artistic production team”, why is Germany so embarrassing

1st session of the Publishing course for our MA today. Have been starting it with Percival Everett’s Erasure for the past three years and it’s always a winner. V glad I decided against replacing it with R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface

Publication day! How writers respond to authoritarians www.routledge.com/Literature-a...