the great, irreplaceable potentiality of fiction is that it makes possible the imagining of possibilities. — Amitav Ghosh

at exactly the time when it has become clear that global warming is in every sense a collective predicament, humanity finds itself in the thrall of a dominant culture in which the idea of the collective has been exiled from politics, economics, and literature alike.

Just as novels have come to be seen as narratives of identity, so too has politics become, for many, a search for personal authenticity, a journey of self-discovery.

To want to be ahead, and to celebrate and mythify this endeavor, is indeed one of the most powerful impulses of modernity itself.