This issue features an exclusive interview with one of our favourite contemporary European novelists, the great László Krasznahorkai, conducted by poet and translator George Szirtes The interview is accompanied by an excerpt from Krasznahorkai’s forthcoming novel, Seiobo There Below Continuing our remit to juxtapose writing by new and established names, this online edition includes a memoir on his deployment as a British soldier in the Iraq War by the previously unpublished Adnan Sarwar As the West considers a new intervention in the Middle East, Adnan reflects upon his own experience as a British Muslim in combat This piece is published alongside the American novelist Joseph McElroy’s personal recollections of 11 September 2001 Elsewhere there’s an interview with the German artist Max Neumann (whose ‘Animalinside’ painting, at the top of this email, was recently published as a collaboration with Krasznahorkai by The Cahiers Series) conducted by the poet Joachim Sartorius, a witty and illuminating essay by Anna Della Subin on the unwilling apotheosis of leaders including Nasser, Nehru and Gandhi, and translations by Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk of poems by Osip Mandelstam, one of the great, persecuted writers of post-revolutionary Russia Kaya Genç, in a brilliant piece that takes as its starting point the socio-political implications of adopting a uniform, sheds light on the cultural tensions undermining contemporary Turkish society In a wide-ranging essay, drawing on HG Wells, Futurama and Fredric Jameson (among other reference points), Henry Little presents a cultural history of the moon