Nadiya Mukhtar’s extended essay interjects in a recent debate about the politics of cultural authenticity, the uses of creative labor, and the normalization of symbolic authority within Kashmir’s expanding music scene. inversejournal.com/acquainta…

Translated from Kashmiri by Azhar Wani, “Jalee’s Tooth” by Gulshan Majeed turns an ordinary discovery in a heap of rubbish into a sharp satire on faith, politics, bureaucracy, and public spectacle. inversejournal.com/fiction/j…

In this commentary from our Acquaintance section, Amir Sultan takes an object sans glamour—the branded pen—and uses it to ask a harder question: why some practices corrupt precisely by remaining mininscule. inversejournal.com/acquainta…

"The Empty Spot" by Bruno Cucciniello situates us within an institution for children—as seen through the eyes of a six-year-old narrator—where the use of a Neapolitan dialect and plain, unflinching prose render daily cruelty sans sentimentality. inversejournal.com/fiction/t…

Muzaffar Karim's "The Great Vanishing Spell" is set in motion by an old imperial embarrassment: an island kingdom that vanished off the map in 1734, along with the prince who sent an army to take it. inversejournal.com/fiction/t…

Peace Ogunjemilua presents "A Tale of Waters", a poem that takes us to Ikogosi, in southwest Nigeria, where a warm spring and a cold one meet. inversejournal.com/poetry/a-…

Kamran Bashir presents a poem that moves through the wreckage of love’s departure as though tracing the streets of a besieged city. inversejournal.com/poetry/a-…

In this review of Five Novels, the new Chris Andrews–translated collection from New Directions, Mubashir Karim takes on a writer often reduced to his famous method, "the flight forward," and asks what's actually happening on the page... inversejournal.com/books/lit…

Inverse Journal is proud to present an exclusive dialogue with Onaiza Drabu, the editor of the recently released The Big Book of Kashmiri Literature (Penguin Books, 2026), and Ashaq Hussain Parray and Rounak Bhat, two of its principal translators. inversejournal.com/books/ith…

Hugh Blanton presents a review of Richard Russo’s forthcoming novel Under the Falls (Knopf), scheduled for release on September 11, 2026. inversejournal.com/books/you…

In these five select poems from Cries, Soumya Mukerji turns poetry into a register of life in "strange and desperate times." inversejournal.com/poetry/fi…

Daniel Gianfranceschi presents a critical essay that compares Jan Švankmajer’s film Faust with billy woods and Kenny Segal’s album Hiding Places... inversejournal.com/music/the…

We are proud to present an excerpt from Seraj Assi’s upcoming novel Red Flour (October 2026, Common Notions Press). The novel brings forth “a compelling story of death and survival, of bread and roses, in a world in which humanity is at a brink.” inversejournal.com/books/pri…

Sohrab Hura’s recently published Snow (MACK,2026) comes across as less of an attempt to represent or portray Kashmir than as a deeper examination of the conditions through which Kashmir becomes photographable and visible. inversejournal.com/books/an-…

In these verses crafted from spare and attentive language, Hassan Ismail Adekunle invites readers to take note of the enduring signification that ordinary acts acquire synonymously with the relationships we cherish and the remembrance that makes us human. inversejournal.com/poetry/be…

Anjana Vipin Edakkunny’s poem takes her back to a monsoon-soaked temple that represents a space where childhood memories, ritual and devotion, and a pact with nature become one and the same. inversejournal.com/poetry/te…

Amir Sultan’s essay draws from popular culture, philosophy, and social psychology to examine the means by which modern institutions engender and normalize wilful obedience as a social ideal. inversejournal.com/non-ficti…

Ashaq Hussain Parray presents his translation of “Spring”, a poem by Munshi Shah Muhammad, who is considered one of the earliest Kashmiri Marsi poets and composers from the Mulla family. inversejournal.com/poetry/sp…

Adil Thanveer presents a personal narrative that connects the architecture of traditional Kashmiri houses to the memory of a grandfather whose presence became synonymous with that space. inversejournal.com/acquainta…

Huzaifa Riyaz presents an academic paper that surveys three core works of Western philosophy in their approach to Aristotelian metaphysics. inversejournal.com/academia/…