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Articles by Zain Khalid
Ayad Akhtar’s Missed Opportunity
Diagnosis is the campus novel’s reigning temptation. The university offers the novelist a prefabricated sociology: different generations, classes, ideologies, and institutions conveniently compressed in vitro, in seminar rooms, where everyone can be assigned a representative grievance before being permitted the inconvenience of ambiguity or personhood. Ayad Akhtar’s new novel, The Radiance, sometimes succumbs to this temptation.
A Novel Follows a Life in Exile: Always on the Move, Past in Tow
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Fiction “Paradiso 17,” by Hannah Lillith Assadi, considers the toll of displacement through the tale of a Palestinian émigré. March 18, 2026, 10:53 a.m. ET PARADISO 17, by Hannah Lillith Assadi There is a strain of the exile novel that mistakes vacancy for depth, drift for destiny. Hannah Lillith Assadi understands that temptation and resists it.
All Houses
The air conditioner spat an insect, a spider, into Ali’s mouth. One week earlier, he had seen a spider, perhaps the same one, skittering into the vents. In the Quran, there is a story about a spider protecting the Prophet Muhammad in some way; Ali forgot how it went. It was a story he had always doubted. As he attempted to push out the eight legs with his tongue, he understood that his skepticism had hardened into faithlessness at an exact but unknown moment before his current middle age.
The Shit
On July 19, 1962, an Egyptian passenger plane traveling from Hong Kong to Cairo via Bangkok crashed into the Sankamphaeng Mountains in Thailand. All twenty-six people on board United Arab Airlines Flight 869 died, including eight crew members. At Sawt El Umma, The Voice of the Nation, the task of reporting the incident fell to Nimo, the mysterious young belle who had arrived at the radio ministry a little over a year earlier, and who — some insinuated — was having an affair with the boss.
From Mobile Development to Data Science: A Guide for Software Engineers
Zain Khalid · Follow 3 min read · -- As a senior software engineer with full-stack mobile development experience, exploring data science can open exciting new doors. Data science combines programming, statistical analysis, and machine learning to derive insights from data and solve real-world problems. This blog will guide you on how to leverage your existing skills and transition into the field of data science.
Efficiently Integrating VisionCamera in a React Native Project
Zain Khalid · Follow 3 min read · -- Integrating VisionCamera into a React Native project requires attention to both performance optimization and effective usage of its features. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to efficiently incorporate VisionCamera into your app: 1.
The Tenth Stage
There is a Buddhist meditational practice, the nine stages of decay, in which practitioners imagine a dead body as it rots. They contemplate the body’s distention, rupture, blood exudation, and putrefaction; its discoloration and desiccation; its eventual consumption by animals and birds; its dismemberment; its reduction to bones; and, finally, its parching to dust.
A Simple Mental Model for Variables
const story = `Once upon a time there was a turtle named Thomas. Thomas loved playing with his friends, but he had a problem. All his friends loved playing in the water, but he didn't know how to swim, and so he was really scared of the water. One day his friend Teresa asked him to come play in the lake. But Thomas didn't want to. When Teresa asked him why, he burst into tears, and admitted that he didn't know how to swim.
Looking for Lorca in New York
By Zain Khalid March 22, 2024 Federico García Lorca at Columbia University, 1929. Public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. For a son of the titular city, reading Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York is akin to curling into your lover, your nose dipped in the well of their collarbone, as they detail your mother’s various personality disorders.
The use of neurobiological evidence in sentencing mitigation
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflict of interest. REFERENCES , , , & (2021). A review of the role of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in criminal court. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 49(1), 60–65. https://doi.org/10.29158/JAAPL.200054-20 (2023). An empirical study of the use of neuroscience in sentencing in New South Wales, Australia. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1228354. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1228354 , , , , & (2019).
Wild Houses | Grove Atlantic
With his acclaimed and award-winning collections Young Skins and Homesickness Colin Barrett cemented his reputation as one of contemporary Irish literature’s most daring stylists. Praised by the Oprah Daily as “a doyen of the sentence,” and by the Los Angeles Times as a writer of “unique genius,” Barrett now expands his canvas with a debut novel that contains as much grit, plot, and linguistic energy as any of his celebrated short stories.
Celebrate Pride: 20 Recent Fiction and Nonfiction Releases by Powell's Staff
This year for Pride, we're celebrating by highlighting some recent fiction and nonfiction that our booksellers have loved that engage with and celebrate the LGBT experience. The books on this list are filled with queer resistance and raw honesty, complicated histories and unexpected heartaches, sexual upheavals and small towns with secrets.
Five Book Friday: Celebrate Arab American Heritage Month by Kelsey Ford
April is Arab American Heritage Month. To celebrate this vibrant community, here are five recent books written by Arab Americans about the Arab American experience. These books explore gender, heritage, sexuality, identity, family, religion, migration, language, trauma, otherness, and so, so much more. The stories are told in exciting, unexpected ways — through vignettes, through time jumps, through alternating points-of-view.
Introducing Book 'Em, Zach-o
Welcome to my newsletter, where I plan to dole out the book recommendations that many folks in my life ask for on a pretty regular basis. As a person of book nerd experience, I’m often asked to tell people with vastly different reading tastes what they should be reading. So, what I’ll do on a semi-regular basis is let you know what I’ve loved or appreciated lately, tell you why, and give you some contextual hints around whether it might be a Book For You, or not.
Triptych from "Stripper Disintegration"
I had been collecting stories for an anthology about strippers for a decade when, in January 2017, my friend Adele Bertei and I went to the Standard Hotel in Downtown LA for a night of readings from and about Kathy Acker, part of Fiona Allison Duncan’s series, “Hard to Read.” Adele had known Acker well in New York; I went primarily to see Chris Kraus. Before the reading began, we had a quick bite with some of Kraus’s and Acker’s friends, including Matias Viegener, the executor of Acker’s estate.
Aqeesha | Rémy Ngamije
You said the two of you were closer than a person and their skin. “The love was sweet, unnaturally saccharine to a pancreas-punching degree — the stomachache was bound to come later.” You said it like that: cool, simultaneously deflective and reflective, as if it were a wound you’d suffered long ago, a hurt that motivated a monkish search for nirvana.
Despot | Zain Khalid
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The Art of Jala Wahid
“Become old, young one.” In West Asia, it is common to hear old women say these words to strangers. The phrase may be a prayer, and it could just as easily be a curse. It all depends on how you treat your elders, the past, your future. Jala Wahid is a multidisciplinary artist committed to exploring what it means to belong to, to remember, to care for, to carry, to be (from) Southern Kurdistan. Anger and Euphoria (2019) consists of two bodies that stand tall in their brokenness.
Galápagos | Fátima Vélez
TO READ THIS STORY IN SPANISH, CLICK HERE.
Authors of 2 Debut Novels: "Brother Alive" & "All This Could Be Different"
A Brooklyn Book Festival "Bookend Event" at Revolution Books in Harlem: An evening with novelists Zain Khalid and Sarah Thankam Mathews When and where Wed, September 28, 2022, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT Location Revolution Books New York 437 Malcolm X Boulevard Harlem New York, NY 10037 Map and directions About this event Dislocations, Contradictions, and Love: An evening with authors of two debut novels by Zain Khalid and by Sarah Thankam Mathews A Brooklyn Book Festival "Bookend Event" at...
Upending Orthodoxy
The world turned upside-down: mad futures, delusional presents, and mysterious pasts intersect in these imaginative and unsettling books that play with time, space, and history as we know it. In Zain Khalid’s Brother Alive, a boy’s hallucinatory alter-ego steals his memories and unsettles his view of the world. In Vanessa Hua’s Forbidden City, a teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong’s protégeé and lover.
Writers Love the World’s Oldest (and Most Obvious) Metaphor
For my characters, most of whom are orphaned, living in the shadow of their parents’ demise, d becomes the belvedere from which they discern life. To research, I uneasily indulged myself in a long and saturnine literary tradition. It wasn’t hard to start. A train of titles seemed to mark our obsession: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Dead Souls, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Death of a Salesman, The Masque of Red Death, on and on ad infinitum.
The Two Imams | Issue 42 | n+1 | Zain Khalid
When Imam Salim returned to New York from his studies in Saudi, he did so with plans to revive his late uncle’s mosque in Staten Island, which he himself had lived above from the age of 8 to 18, after his parents were found under the weight of an upturned lorry in New Karachi. Occident Street Mosque, our bricky low-rise, lay slumped at the end of a houseless strip of concrete that was marked at irregular intervals by linden trees and at regular intervals by the wavery tide pools of streetlights.
2 Israelis wounded by rocket landed in Ashdod
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How to Make a Bodega Sandwich
How to Make a Bodega Sandwich Zain Khalid 189 Snaps To properly construct a bodega sandwich, sammich, hoagie, or sub, it is helpful to first consider Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. Forget for a second that this painting ushered in the dawn of Romanticism. Instead, study the shipwrecked subjects, the fifteen men with faces longer than hymns who endured their own appetites for thirteen days at sea. Bodegas often serve those who can’t or won’t eat elsewhere.
Out of Oval Office Auto-Reply
Thank you for your email. I will be OOOO (Out of Oval Office) until Monday, August 21st. I’ve worked so incredibly hard for the past six months, so I am taking a much-need, taxpayer-funded vacation that will profit my private business.
A Pricing Sheet for My Data
The US Senate voted to eliminate broadband privacy rules that would have required ISPs to get consumers’ explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other companies. —Ars Technica Are you a corporation or governmental subcommittee looking to purchase the data of a brown man in his mid-twenties with negative net worth and suspicious-looking stubble?
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fidget Spinner
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fidget Spinner Soon after I bought my first fidget spinner, I stopped making eye contact with loved ones during conversations. After my second, I went weeks without showering. Thirty-nine spinners and a divorce later, I can comfortably say that this is mankind’s greatest distraction since loose change in pockets. A fidget spinner is exactly the kind of handheld escapism we need right now. The president just tweeted a swastika? Spin.
Introducing FitBigot!
Are you looking for a device to count the number of backward steps we’ve taken as individuals and as a society? Well, look no further: FitBigot’s new line of regression trackers will keep you comfortably aware of how far we haven’t come.
Mystery Novels Inspired by a Co-Working Space
Ten strangers are lured to a co-working space under false pretenses (subway advertisements featuring racially diverse college graduates happily sharing whiteboards). Despite this promise of harmony, the most observant of the co-workers, a twenty-five-year-old novelist, senses that something malicious is afoot. Sure enough, the dry-erase markers start to disappear, one by one, until finally they’re all missing. Or stolen. Or dead. Who really knows?
The Islamic State’s Thank You Letter to the Infidel King, Donald Trump
The Islamic State’s Thank You Letter to the Infidel King, Donald Trump We hope this isn’t too forward, but you’ve been the best thing for the Islamic State since the Iraq War. For this, you have our thanks and a forthcoming basket of Edible Arrangements. It’s not often we feel this positively about an American President. Your predecessor, despite his middle name, was kind of a dick.
Forthcoming Redecoration and Renovation at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Although the Trumps have not made public who their designer or designers are, immediate changes are sure to be coming to the Oval Office and private quarters. Donald Trump is extremely image-conscious: He reportedly is very involved with architects and designers for his various hotels, condos and office buildings and knows his way around high-end fixtures (preferably gold) and fabrics. —Washington Post.
We All Scream for Ice Cream
I will scream. You will scream. We all will scream for ice cream. Shrieks will tear through the night—cries of children, cries of men. We will all degrade ourselves for the ice cream. August days torn asunder by the insatiable desire for ice cream. Humid blocks packed with wretched bodies wandering. Wandering for ice cream. I will scream for ice cream, and I do. The summer is lost. In its place, only the lawlessness of the ice-cream-less. And screaming. A traveller on the road. Your parched eyes meet.
My Favorite “Friends” Episodes
“The One Where No One’s Ready” “The One With All the Thanksgivings” “The One Where They Go Outside” “The One Where the Writers Were on Strike” “The One Where Gunther Almost Leaks the Panama Papers” “The One Where Everyone Drinks Ayahuasca” “The One Where Ross Gets Adult Braces” “The One Where Gregor Awakens to Discover He Has Transformed into a Monstrous Vermin” “The One Where Chandler Says ‘Noooo, I’m NOT Depressed’ and Everyone Just Kind of Takes It at Face Value” “The One Where Joey Books...
Questions I Use to Evaluate a New Recipe
Is the phrase “gluten-free” (as in, “You’ll never notice that this is gluten-free!”) buried somewhere in the text of the recipe? Am I sure? I should read it a second time. Do I recognize all of the main ingredients in this recipe? Is there any chance that any of these ingredients are already in my home? Of the ingredients I do not have, are any of them available at the bodega downstairs, or will I have to put on a jacket and walk to the grocery store to get them?
Tasting Menus to Pair with Your Favorite TV Shows
Yesterday’s Seamless sushi and Duane Reade wine product just not cutting it as complements to your favorite television show? Instead, try these menus, specifically designed to enhance your viewing experience and enable the crippling TV addiction that’s preventing you from reënrolling in law school.
I Stopped Reading Your Screenplay to Save Our Marriage.
I Stopped Reading Your Screenplay to Save Our Marriage. I’m honored you asked for my feedback on your clearly autobiographical screenplay, Unfulfilled. But after reading the first 40 pages, I think it’s better for our marriage if I never look at it again. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s already irreparably damaged how I look at our relationship, children, plants, tweets, and Spotify playlists.
Your Netflix Account Is Cancelling You, Susan
“Toddlers and Tiaras”? Again? Have some respect for yourself. This isn’t you. I know you. You used to eat up every independent drama and Cannes-nominated short film my algorithm could push to the front of your queue. I was a perfect thirty-eight-for-thirty-eight when it came to suggesting titles in 2012. Sadly, that’s all over now. I don’t know who or what genre you are anymore, and I’ve been binge-watching your life for years. This is all to say that I’m done.
The Universally Electable Vice-Presidential Candidate.
See all articles from this column As an African-American Hispanic Jewish Catholic woman who experimented with homosexuality in her early twenties but ultimately married a Libertarian congressman from a key swing state, I am honored to accept both the Republican and Democratic nominations for Vice President! The more jaded among you may believe my running mates picked me to bring in votes from women, minorities, LGBTQs, the left, the right, the religious right, and the Hebrews.
On Fleek’s Eulogy for Ratchet.
See all articles from this column We are gathered here today to mourn Ratchet as she is laid to rest between her mentors, Hot Mess and White Girl Wasted. It seems like just yesterday she became known as the only way to properly ridicule those who wore ill-fitting weave or subjected an entire megabus to Rihanna by way of cellphone speakers. She was, at her core, the very essence of revulsion. Other terms inspired me, but it was Ratchet who showed me how to truly influence a generation.
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