New Lines’ Spring 2025 print issue explores how people navigate change, conflict and identity worldwide, weaving together reportage, history and political and cultural analysis. A two-year investigation sheds light on a Swiss adoption scandal, while in Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa’s transformation from jihadist to political leader raises unsettling questions. Taiwan leverages literature for soft power, while South Asians grapple with climate change through tradition-driven innovation. Psychedelics, mythmaking and art also feature, from pharmaceutical battles over mind-altering substances to the cryptid lore of central Africa, Lebanese photographer Fouad Elkoury’s evocative images and even what Batman reveals about Anglo-American relations. A striking photo essay from Tigray highlights Ethiopia’s war-scarred heritage and a frequent contributor covers France’s shocking mass rape trial. Each story offers deep, unexpected connections across time and place.
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To some, Syria’s new transitional president is a cunning mastermind whose jihadist roots threaten to plunge the region into a new cycle of extremism and violence. But Ahmad al-Sharaa’s family legacy and the evolution of his rhetoric, ideas and actions hint at a deeper story.
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Cultural exchanges fostered by Taiwan are helping its literature to find new audiences in Slavic languages, as support for Taipei’s sovereignty grows in Central and Eastern Europe.
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The Garima Gospels were penned at a moment when time stood still — the sun held high in the sky by a less weary God. More than 1,500 years later, the Garima community is learning to live with myriad absences — the Gospels, their saint and their loved ones.
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From Batman’s reliance on his English butler Alfred to Gotham City’s origin in a legend from medieval Nottinghamshire, the Batman mythos offers a window into the bloody, gothic substrate of the Anglo-American relationship and the American appetite for British advice and encouragement.
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Finding liminal spaces in war, capturing a ray of light or an unexpected moment suspended in time, Fouad Elkoury’s unique style makes his photography timeless. He has retraced a historical journey in Egypt, documented his own loneliness during a trip to Turkey and found poetry amid chaos and destruction.
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Gisele Pelicot’s decision to make public the horrific details of her abuse has transformed her into a reluctant icon, galvanizing a movement of collective reckoning. The mass rape trial taking place in Avignon is not just a pursuit of justice; it is a crucible of solidarity and sisterhood.
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With over 7,200 dotting its three mountain ranges — the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram and the Himalayas — Pakistan is home to the most glaciers outside the polar regions. Due to climate change, they are melting rapidly, creating unique challenges.
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A two-year investigation by New Lines and Investigate Europe shows how dubious practices by a key figure in Switzerland’s adoption scandal, Alice Honegger, date back much earlier than previously understood, becoming ground zero for the country’s disgraceful international adoption policy.
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