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editor's desk

Illustration by George Butler

War Stories

The laws of war make for a brittle pact at best, and can seem like a tragic fallacy up against an army’s nihilistic impulses. Russia’s tactics in Ukraine prove as much: atrocities in Bucha; the bombing of a maternity hospital in Kharkiv; imprisoning and terrorizing children in Yahidne; the shelling of civilian evacuees fleeing Irpin.

Cover illustration by Agostino Iacurci

Ways of Attention

June 27, 2022

Joy seems hard to sustain these days if you’re paying close enough attention to the world around you. A somber mood with which to kick off a Summer Fiction issue, but it lands amid crises both familiar and new.

Summer Reading

Our cover story takes us to Cambodia, which lies nestled between its more geopolitically powerful neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. What the country lacks in regional influence it makes up for in the vitality of its waterways, particularly Lake Tonle Sap, which is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. The Tonle Sap—​meaning “great lake”—​flows into the Tonle Sap River and intersects with the Mekong River in Phnom Penh. During the summer, monsoon rains force so much water down the Mekong that the Tonle Sap changes direction and flows back into the lake and swells it in size.