September 2020
Magazine
The Monthly Essays
In the face of the pandemic, Scott Morrison has failed to adjust his thinking, and wants to return to the way things used to be
Thirty years on from the excoriating royal commission, two practitioners of deep sleep therapy seek redemption in a defamation case that again blames Scientologists for their downfall
The Nation Reviewed
Australia’s assumption that China will give up its Pacific rivalry with the US is dangerously misguided
What are the priorities of policing protests under lockdown?
What chronic illness can teach us about the limits of the healthcare system during a global crisis
VOX
A visit to Ürümqi’s quieted streets and contested museums
When international ports close, what happens to those at sea?
Arts & Letters
The trenches of Mount Druitt: OneFour
Australia’s most infamous hip-hop act is an all-Pasifika group born of Western Sydney’s violent postcode wars
Attack on language: ‘Surviving Autocracy’ and ‘Twilight of Democracy’
Masha Gessen and Anne Applebaum sound alarms on how ‘post-truth’ public debate leaves us mute in the face of autocracy
‘Cinematic’ television: ‘ZeroZeroZero’
Forget comparisons to cinema, TV is developing its own compelling aesthetic
A tangle of red tape is robbing us of music podcasts in Australia
Noted
‘What Are You Going Through’ by Sigrid Nunez The late-life author of ‘The Friend’ delivers a chastening and discursive novel of mourning
‘Little Eyes’ by Samanta Schweblin (trans. Megan McDowell) Intimacy and privacy blur as people adopt cybernetic pets inhabited remotely by others, in this disturbing speculative fiction
