Best New Yorker Letter from Abroad
Letter from Abroad collects The New Yorker's dispatches from around the world—from London to Jerusalem, Moscow to Tokyo. These pieces offer on-the-ground reporting and cultural observation from correspondents stationed across the globe.
163 picks · 1940–2024
Top authors: Peter Hessler (9), Mollie Panter-Downes (7), David Remnick (7)
While facing renewed accusations of cultural theft, the institution announced that it had been the victim of actual theft—from someone on the inside. Rebecca Mead reports.
In the Brazilian Amazon, illegal miners are ravaging Yanomami lands. Jon Lee Anderson embeds with a unit of combat-trained environmentalists who are fighting to save the rain forest.
After Zac Brettler mysteriously fell to his death in the Thames, his parents, Matthew and Rachelle, discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son, including in dealings with Akbar Shamji and Verinder (Dave )Sharma. Patrick Radden Keefe reports on the case’s many complexities, including an oddly curtailed police investigation.
Beatriz Flamini liked to be alone so much that she decided to live underground—and pursue a world record. The experience was gruelling and surreal. D. T. Max reports.
From the start, women were at the center of the demonstrations that swept Iran last year, Azadeh Moaveni writes. Schoolgirls emerged as an unexpected source of defiant energy.
The President of China compared moral education to fastening buttons on clothes, Peter Hessler writes. The girls’ buttons were wrong from the start, but they learned the more valuable lessons that two systems can impart.
Every year in India, many thousands of women are killed in marriage-payment disputes, and tens of millions suffer intimate-partner violence, Manvir Singh writes. Why does this war on women persist?
Andrew Marantz writes about the independent-state-legislature theory, Trump’s rationale for trying to overturn the 2020 election, which could, in Moore v. Harper, become the law of the land.
The disaster highlighted the corruption and authoritarianism of President Erdoğan, Suzy Hansen writes. Can he finally be defeated?
As occupied territories are liberated, some residents face accusations that they sided with the enemy, Joshua Yaffa writes.
Elif Batuman on how to reckon with the ideology of “Anna Karenina,” “Eugene Onegin,” and other beloved books.
Alexis Okeowo writes that tens of thousands of people have disappeared on their way to Europe. Can they be identified?
Peter Hessler writes about how the country experienced so much social, economic, and educational change while its politics remained stagnant.
Masha Gessen writes that, after eighty years, the site of a mass execution of Jews was about to be commemorated. Then Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Joshua Yaffa writes that, after thwarting a quick victory for Russia, Ukrainians are galvanized—and facing a punitive assault.
Peter Hessler writes that the students he taught in the nineteen-nineties grew up in rural poverty. Now they’re in their forties, and their country is unrecognizable.
Masha Gessen writes about Dmitry Muratov and the journalists of Novaya Gazeta, who report on dangerous conflicts and endure threats of their own.
Joshua Yaffa reports on what happened to Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the only known African American to die in the Gulag.
On a hillside ages ago, people inscribed a naked man with a twenty-six-foot-long erect penis, Rebecca Mead writes. Why did they do it?
As the pandemic makes an already terrible housing crisis worse, a new version of house-sitting signals a broken real-estate market, Francesca Mari writes.
Two metal-detector enthusiasts discovered a Viking hoard. It was worth a fortune—but it became a nightmare, Rebecca Mead writes.
The beguilements of the sleeper car have never seemed sharper than on the eve of a global lockdown, Anthony Lane writes.
Peter Hessler on forty-five days of avoiding the coronavirus.
Jon Lee Anderson reports on whether the controversial socialist leader Evo Morales was deposed or escaped justice.
The agency has always been viewed as removed from political spats. But the timing of the U.S.’s decision seems suspicious, Peter Hessler writes.
Can Peter Orszag keep the President’s political goals economically viable?
Inside a movie marketer’s playbook.
How the Chinese experienced the Olympics.
Hollywood arrives on Skid Row.
The national scramble to learn a new language before the Olympics.
A comedian’s war on crooked politics.
Can the trees of the Great Smoky Mountains be saved?
The disputed region gears up to declare independence.
The Republican implosion.
The battle for France.
Jane Kramer on Benedict XVI, Catholicism, and Islam.
Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?
After the earthquake, some strange new alliances.
Marauding Taliban and drug-dealing warlords on the road to Kandahar.
George Packer on the situation in Iraq in 2003, soon after the U.S. invasion.
Every two weeks, on average, someone jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. What makes it such a magnet for the suicidal?
Kim Jong Il plays a canny game with South Korea and the U.S.
Roy Lee brings Asia to Hollywood, and finds some enemies along the way.
When did Bush decide that he had to fight Saddam?
The world is running out of fresh water, and the fight to control it has begun.
Who has the right to rule Afghanistan?
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about the possible goals of Osama bin Laden… Writer talks with Bruce Hoffman, the director of the Washington office of the RAND …
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about the shape of foreign policy to come under George W. Bush. . . Mentions his predilection for settling scores scores with …
The Boston inventor Bob Rines travels to Scotland to find the most famous—and most elusive—aquatic beast in the world.
LETTER FROM LONDON about P.M. Tony Blair... Writer describes a protest against Blair's proposed ban of fox-hunting... A couple of days later, when I …
LETTER FROM NANTAHALA about fugitive Eric Rudolph. Rudolph is wanted by the F.B.I. for bombings at a Birmingham abortion clinic, an Atlanta abortion …
Rebecca Mead on the booming popularity of cashmere clothing in America, and how the Mongolian cashmere industry is actually in trouble.
LETTER FROM LIBERIA about President Charles Taylor... Liberia has always been a harsh place, but for most of this century it was one of the most stable …
LETTER FROM LANCASTER COUNTY about Amish drug dealers. On July 2nd, two Amishmen from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Abner Stolzfus and Abner King …
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about pro-life U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who supports a ban on partial-birth abortions. On the evening of September 26, 1996, …
LETTER FROM JERUSALEM about Israeli politician and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky. In the Land of Israel, nothing is more telling than the hat on …
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. On the morning of June 25th, Tom Daschle, of South Dakota, the Senate Minority Leader, …
John Seabrook visits George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch, and reflects on the lasting power—both mythical and commercial—of Star Wars.
LETTER FROM RUSSIA about Boris Yeltsin's election in Russia. The writer met with Valdimir Kryuchkov, the last K.G.B. head, in the last days of the …
David Remnick on the first—and last—President of the Soviet Union.
Philip Gourevtich on the aftermath of the Hutu power’s months-long genocide against the Tutsi minority, in Rwanda, in 1994. When a people murders up to a million fellow-countrymen, what does it mean to survive?
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about the abandoned opportunity for a Republican Presidential candidacy by Gen. Colin Powell and the new politics of racial …
LETTER FROM GERMANY about the controversy over the proposed Holocaust memorial in Berlin. It could be said that in the fifty years since the war in Europe …
LETTER FROM THE ANDES about coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived. Andean Indians contend that it is a mistake to demonize coca, a plant they hold …
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON about Senator Bill Bradley. Tells about his gesture of obeisance to writer, which impressed writer as self-deprecating. It is …
Her sexual-harassment claims against President Clinton spawned a lurid scandal, Sidney Blumenthal writes. But for a disgruntled network of televangelists and anti-abortionists, she is more than a cause—she is an opportunity.
Joan Didion on Lakewood, California, a once idyllic postwar town that fell under the sway of a teen-age gang.
Guy Trebay on the drag performer breaking out of the downtown-Manhattan underground and into the commercial pop scene with his début video, an MTV staple, “Supermodel (You Better Work!).”
Nearly every day for decades, Irving V. Link tanned by the luxury pool, Adam Gopnik writes. Then his idyllic life style came under threat from the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei.
Elizabeth Drew on how the “nothing to lose” candidate from Arkansas beat George Bush and Ross Perot in the 1992 Presidential election, in his first campaign.
To land the biggest gig in late night, Leno had to make an enemy of David Letterman, Peter J. Boyer writes—and abandon the manager and longtime friend who’d brought him to TV in the first place.
David Remnick meets the city’s best-known newspaper editors, including the founder of Nezavisimaya Gazeta—“the closest thing Russia has ever had to a Western daily,” he wrote, in 1992.
Tells about budget & tax negotiations between, the President and the Democrats. The President's Jun. 26 acknowledgement of the obvious--that new taxes …
Joan Didion on the history of the L.A. Times.
The author visits a downtown courtroom and Los Angeles County Fire Department headquarters during the hottest and driest time of the year for the desert city.
Robert Cullen on Gorbachev’s rise in the Soviet Union—and the Stalinist essence of the country he was trying to govern and reform.
The author on her experience of California earthquakes, the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, and the question of houses in the city—and what they are worth.
Just as Reagan was widely being written off as irrelevant, as a lame-duck President merely serving out his last days, the recent summit meeting here with …
LETTER FROM IRAN about demonstrations against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s government. There has been a religious revival in Iran, with strong political …
Tells about the tragedy of the 20th Olympiad when Arab terrorists scaled the fence around the Olympic Village & held members of the Israeli team hostage, …
Xavier Rynne on the Pope’s 1968 encyclical on birth control.
On one of the closing days of Vatican Council II, in St. Peter's, a joint declaration by the Pope and the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, …
Renata Adler's 1965 report on the civil-rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
From 1964: Calvin Trillin on an encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr., during a summer of pressure.
Richard H. Rovere on George Wallace’s campaign in 1964.
Obituary of Edith Piaf who died at seven o'clock in the morning in Paris, and a few hours later on the same recent Friday her friend Jean Cocteau, in …
Xavier Rynne reports on the election of Cardinal Montini as Pope Paul VI, in 1963, during the Second Vatican Council.
Mollie Panter-Downes on the affair between John Profumo and Christine Keeler, which brought down the government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
Writing in 1960, E. B. White reflects on the rise of TV advertising and its effects on politics, journalism, and culture.
Richard H. Rovere on Senator John F. Kennedy’s slim-margin victory, over Vice-President Richard Nixon, in the 1960 Presidential election.
The 86th Congress has opened. In the House, the Republicans cast down their leader, Joe Martin of Mass. & put in his place Charles Halleck of Ind. Stephen …
A. J. Liebling’s 1957 report from the Gaza strip.
“It was probably the most superb and certainly the most moving one that anybody now living has seen,” Mollie Panter-Downes reported from London, in 1953.
Mollie Panter-Downes on London’s coronation preparations for Queen Elizabeth II’s big day.
Mollie Panter-Downes reports from London about the days following King George VI’s tragically unexpected death and Elizabeth II’s rise to the throne.
Libya, former Italian colony, will become an independent federal state according to a declaration of the United Nations, not later than Jan., 1952. There …
Mollie Panter-Downes reports from London on the Trooping of the Colour ceremony, in 1951, and its outstanding figure, Princess Elizabeth on horseback: “the lone apex of an otherwise massively masculine show.”
Janet Flanner’s 1950 Letter from Rome telling of the journalistic excitement stirred up by the birth of Ingrid Bergman’s baby.
Writing in 1945, Janet Flanner speaks with a concentration-camp survivor.
In the middle of a global war, Mollie Panter-Downes writes of a serious-faced young Princess who may one day mount England’s ancient throne.
Writing in 1940, Mollie Panter-Downes reports on the fortitude of Londoners during German air raids.