The Rilke bio-novel: From healthy flying to dramatic fiction.
BookZone
I was born and educated in South Africa, and have spent most of my life living in London and Oxford. From 1996 to 2009, I was the director...
Morrison’s Blues: Dominique Ziegler revisite le mythe du chanteur des Doors
Dominique Ziegler est un metteur en scène et
metteur en mots de talent. Théâtre chevillé au corps, il propose un Morrison’s Blues
tout en finesse, avec atmosphère glauque d’un décor de circonstance. La
rencontre entre...
Tibetan-Swiss artist Kesang Lamdark: Highlighting China’s repression
It was a decade ago. Fabio Rossi
told me I have to meet his artist friend Kesang Lamdark. I called Lamdark and
arranged to meet him in a pub in London where he was...
La veuve de Lokman Slim demande une enquête indépendante sur l’assassinat de son mari
Quel
est le but de votre visite en Suisse ?
Je suis en Suisse pour activer, avec un groupe d’amis, Umam Switzerland, petite sœur suisse de l’association
que nous avons fondée au...
A Swiss initiative to redo the Internet: crypto scepticism abounds
You may have caught a whiff of last month’s explosive climb into cryptocurrencies' top 10 valuations by a mammoth Swiss-based project to replace the Internet we know today. One crypto analyst described...
Christine Brooke-Rose: International Geneva’s invisible author
Christine Brooke-Rose (1923-2012), born in Geneva but in retirement a long-time resident of Lou Jas in Les Maquignons (The Horsedealers), near Avignon in Provence, was almost certainly the most erudite and inventive...
Basel’s uneasy cross-border relationship with Nazi Germany 1933-1945
As a baby boomer of Swiss origin born in the United States, I was always fascinated by Switzerland’s survival role as a neutral country during World War II. My British-educated father, who...
Murder in Room 117: How the assassination of one of America’s top diplomats helped...
As a young foreign correspondent, I undertook my first reporting assignment to Kabul in October 1979, seven months after the killing of Adolph ‘Spike’ Dubs, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, and two months...
Tackling poverty and ageism post-COVID, if you can’t join Nomadland
We don't all have the courage to join Bob Wells, founder of the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous and CheapRVLiving. And sociologically, the film Nomadland distorts the common experience of ageing and poverty-afflicted Americans....
Steve McCurry (Part II): The complications of photography
Feature Photo: Copyright Steve McCurry
Steve McCurry has earned fame as a
photographer who produced some of the most exquisitely beautiful colour images
in the past several decades. McCurry’s critics, and...
Livres coups de cœur: ‘Café Vivre’
L’éloge des cafés
Café Vivre est le beau
titre choisi par la romancière et essayiste
française Chantal Thomas
pour introduire le recueil de ses Chroniques en passant, comme elle les nomme
joliment, paru aux...
The long road to the women’s vote in Switzerland
In the Council of States, one of the two
chambers of the Swiss parliament in Bern, one wall is dominated by a fresco in
five panels. Die Landsgemeinde by Albert Welti was completed between
1907...
Digital nomads, Caribbean revolutionaries and making the best of lockdown through NBN
Growing numbers of British and other European students have opted to travel abroad as digital nomads in lieu of remaining for the pandemic winter lockdowns of their universities. Here British students in...
Focus: Steve McCurry – merging art with photojournalism (Part I)
View podcast by America's Editor William Dowell and Edward Girardet with Steve McCurry. See Link.
As aspiring young reporters, both Steve McCurry and I began covering the war...
Understanding the hysteria over Hillbilly Elegy
You're not expecting a masterpiece, given the title, right? But did you anticipate this ordinary ($25m) film from Netflix (See trailer) would cause so much anger among liberal critics, when Glenn Close...
The power of creativity: a path to healing for survivors of sexual violence, war...
Agent Provocateur is Global Insight Magazine's op-ed section.
At first, she was frozen in silence, unable even to make eye contact. Eventually, she wove her unspoken, unspeakable memories...
Whitney Azoy’s Afghanistan: A Partial Comprehension – tales and photos from the pre-war
When National Geographic Magazine commissioned me during the early 2000s to do a story that would ‘reveal’ Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led NATO occupation, I was somewhat panicked. As with...
Helvetius, face-à-face percutant entre les Helvètes et Jules César
En 58 avant Jésus-Christ, la Gaule indépendante est un vaste territoire
habité par différents peuples d’origine celte. Jules César, politicien romain
ambitieux et contesté, cherche à déclencher une guerre pour assoir son pouvoir,
sa légitimité...
Elie Berheim, un entrepreneur devenu romancier par passion
Table pour trois à New York est un journal intime, un récit polyphonique qui met en scène Gabriel, Norah, Alicia, Charles, Rachel et une belle-mère envahissante mais très aimante. Voyageant entre Paris...
Cent femmes pour nous inspirer à changer
Hafsat Abiola - Drawing by Gayle Kabaker
Elles s’appellent Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Melinda Gates, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Bachelet, Geena Davis et Jacinda Ardern. Certaines dirigent des pays, d’autres des fondations ou contribuaient à...
Swiss Journeys: Le Corbusier, artiste aux multiples-talents, précurseur de l’architecture moderne
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, né le 6 octobre 1987 à La Chaux-de-Fonds, choisira de s’appeler Le Corbusier - déformation du nom de son arrière-grand-père maternel Lecorbésier – en 1920. Dessinateur de talent, il laisse...
Othello in Switzerland: Keeping Shakespeare – and theatre – alive
As part of its support for the arts, Global Geneva asked director Paul Stebbings to explain how the TNT travelling theatre company have managed to re-establish its traditional touring in the...
Swiss Journeys: Le Tessin, un souffle de Méditerranée (2ème partie) À la rencontre de...
L'église de San Giovanni Battista à Mogno/The church of San Giovanni Battista in Mogno.(Photo: Enrico Cano)
« Pour comprendre Mario Botta, il est primordial de visiter sa ville natale et...
Swiss Journeys: Ticino, a breath of the Mediterranean in Switzerland (Part 1)
The coronavirus pandemic and the fear of a new cross-border lockdown have convinced many living in Switzerland to head south to the Ticino, the country’s only Italian-speaking canton,...
Swiss Journeys: Le Tessin, un souffle de Méditerranée en Suisse (Première partie)
La pandémie du coronavirus et la crainte d’un nouveau confinement
transfrontalier ont convaincu nombre d’habitants de différentes régions suisses
de se rendre au Tessin, canton italophone qui accueille les visiteurs à bras
ouverts. Les responsables...
La Chaux-de-Fonds, Métropole horlogère et ville de culture
Le visiteur prend le train ou la route de la Vue des Alpes pour arriver à La Chaux-de-Fonds. La Métropole horlogère, sise à 1’000 mètres d’altitude, a célébré, en juin 2019 avec...
The Artistic World of Betsabeé Romero in Mexico
Betsabeé Romero is now listening to the suddenly silent streets of Mexico City, North America’s largest city. From her little street house in the Villa de Cortés district, the artist is on...
Moving together: jazz from a funky Swiss philosopher
Philosophers’ ideas for music are rarely fun. Among the Swiss, Friedrich Nietzsche's music is nobody's idea of a good time. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's compositions hardly rate the effort to preserve them (though one...
Running an English bookstore in the time of the pandemic
Matthew Wake with Clare O'Dea, author of The Naked Irish. (Photo: Books, Books, Books)
A pandemic swept through my bookshop ten years ago. It started quite innocuously when a woman who...
Rural Rock: Queen, Oasis and the Ridge Farm Story
When some 30 police officers raided both Ridge Farm, one of England’s earliest rural rock recording studios, and the nearby Plough Pub, at 6.00 am in spring, 1982, they were hoping to...
COVID-19: Godzilla for the 21st century
Shane Carruth (born 1 January 1972) has positioned himself as a film director who, through science fiction stories, tries to find new ways of presenting narrative and...
Mountain Biking Blasts in the Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc Region
This outdoors feature is part of Global Geneva's 'Youth Writes' initiative.
I began riding as a kid in the south of England before joining a mountain bike club in my teens. Pretty soon, I was...
Carouge, Geneva’s Greenwich Village
A bit like a pesky little brother who steals your toys and pulls your hair, Carouge tugs at Geneva’s locks, almost thumbing its nose at the broody burghers who live next door. Independent and...
Travel & Environment: Might we fall in love again and still save our forests
EARLIER THIS SUMMER, TWO MATES AND I set out on what turned out to be a “bridge-too-far” walking project. Switzerland is blessed with more than 60,000 km of walking trails crowned by seven iconic...
Masood Khalili’s Whispers of War – A guerrilla’s journey during the Soviet occupation of...
FOCUS: Forty years of war in Afghanistan. This extract is published in our 2018/19 Winter Edition of Global Geneva. It is also part of Global Geneva's ongoing series on Afghanistan.
It is now 7:20 pm....
Swiss Journeys: A weekend in the Valais – culture, vineyards and thermal baths
The Valais (or Wallis in German), southeast of Lake Geneva, is one of Switzerland’s most sun-drenched cantons, offering up to 2,000 hours a year of sunlight. The protective positioning of the Alps overlooking the...
Chamonix: France’s premier – and almost Swiss – mountain capital
The following article is scheduled to be published in Global Geneva's Nov. 2018 - January 2018 print and e-edition.
Upon their return home, Windham and Pococke’s gushing tales found favour in the European press. The...
Switzerland’s green bike trails: Les Voies Vertes
THE BEST WAY I KNOW OF TAKING IT ALL IN is to get on a bike and hit the greenways, known in the francophone part of the country as les voies vertes. They are also...
Polar2018: Bringing the Arctic and Antarctic together in Switzerland
Changes in the polar regions have a great influence on the global climate, sea level change, ecosystems, the livelihood of Indigenous peoples, transport routes, and resource exploitation, to name but a few. What happens...
In Lisbon, Still Savvy After All These Years, Growing Alarm
LISBON – Techies snapping up real estate call this the new San Francisco. Moveable-feast jet setters see a new Istanbul. But this is still the old Lisbon, a fresh incarnation of the outward looking...
Festival Filmar en America Latina, jusqu’au 3 décembre (French version)
Ce qui oblige les amateurs à prendre ou commander leur billet avec une bonne avance. Une vingtaine de cinéastes et acteurs sont présents et échangent de manière conviviale avec le public. Parmi les moments...
Update: Switzerland’s first driverless bus will run until 2019
Swiss Post, the city of Sion and Valais authorities have announced that the 16-month experiment of running two PostBus driverless buses (with yellow-teeshirted attendants) through the pedestrian quarter of the Valais capital will continue...
Confessions of an unrepentant foodie: The City with the Best Food in the World
This article was first published in the Oct/Nov 2017 print and e-edition of Global Geneva magazine.
PHOTOS BY LEYLA ALYANAK
WHAT IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU the best food in the world was to be found in Lyon, just...
Letter from Philadelphia: A Swiss Makes Artistic Splash in the City of Brotherly...
This article was first published in the Oct/Nov 2017 print and e-edition of Global Geneva magazine.
CHRISTINE PFISTER WAS MANAGING THE ZERMATT office for a family-owned company building prefabri cated mountain chalets, when she decided that it...
LIVING IN A TREEHOUSE: A writer-in-residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation
This article was first published in the Oct/Nov 2017 print and e-edition of Global Geneva magazine.
AT THE JAN MICHALSKI FOUNDATION FOR WRITING AND LITERATURE, there are seven cabins or ‘treehouses’ – the structures hang off a...
Morges Book Festival 1-3 September 2017 – World’s Finest Writers
The annual literary festival, Le livre sur les quais, is in Morges this weekend. The festival gathers together an array of French, Swiss and international writers, both French and English speaking, who will give...
‘The most famous woman in Europe’ 200 years on
Her private life, scandalous at the time for its number of affairs with younger men, meant that more attention was given to the gossip than the ideals. She is often contrasted with Jane Austen,...
Switzerland’s first driverless bus. A new public transport solution?
The experimental SmartShuttle service is due to continue until the end of October. The utilitarian argument has been to take heavily-laden shoppers and pensioners 1.5km through the pedestrian streets to conventional bus stops on...
Maybe weird but also wonderful: Valais Festival of New Music
Music from helicopters, a Swiss men's choir swinging back and forth on hydraulic pistons in a church, a political Tibetan pop-rock group -- ForumWallis's excursions into experimental music might sound more weird than wonderful,...
Valais wines before the disaster: a bumper year on show
All is not lost, however, particularly with regard to last year's harvest. The canton's wine cellars will be open to visitors on 25-27 May, 2017, the weekend of Ascension. So this might be the...
