The Nobel Prize for Literature is rich with remarkable anecdotes. One of the most notable is the story of Russian writer Boris Pasternak, who in 1958…

The ring of a smartphone does not bring with it the same sense of foreboding as that of a landline.Being able to set the volume and choose the sound…

Is there a solution to the decline of Arab intellectuals?Considering the French concept of intellectuals (“intellectuel”), there is an increasing…

What do decaffeinated coffee, nicotine-free cigarettes, sugar-free jams, non-alcoholic beer, and non-dairy milk have in common?They all participate…

The concept of dialogue borrows from two branches of philosophy: epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and metaphysics (which deals with the first…

The Latin word for mirror is “speculum” from which the French word “spéculation” and its English sister “speculation” are derived. Both mean…

I got the idea for this essay from an article by Czech writer Milan Kundera who, as he wrote in Le Monde, was "almost exiled" to France in 1975…

In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera categorises people into four types according to the kind of look they wish to live…

The generation of Arab intellectuals who finished college in the early 1960s have now exceeded the age of 80. Born in the 1930s and 40's — this was…

European countries are making it increasingly difficult for citizens from countries south of the Mediterranean Sea to obtain visas. With this ‘visa…