MEGACITY brings together new writing from some of the most impenetrable corners of the world today with creativity, resilience and beautifully black humour. COVID-19 has thrived in megacities and poses unique challenges to the world’s densest urban hubs. Beat lockdown by travelling virtually, into the homes and lives of global megacity writers from Karachi, Paris, Manila, Lagos, Tokyo and others. Absurd, extreme, pleasure-filled, crime-ridden. Sky-high meccas of opportunity, vast swathes of squalor. This is the megacity and this, in many ways, is our future. Not long ago these massive urban hubs with over 10 million people were an anomaly - in 1950 only New York and Tokyo could claim the title. Now, eight of the world's population live in thirty-three megacities with many more predicted to arrive and make these places their home in the coming years. MEGACITY brings together twenty-two individual, creative responses to the megacity, infiltrating some of the densest, most difficult corners of the world today. From the tightly packed slums of Delhi and the violent favelas of São Paulo, to eye-watering London property prices and Chinese megacities constructed seemingly overnight - if you boggle at how anyone negotiates today’s rampant, unchecked city growth, this book is for you. Witchcraft, terrorism, chemical swamps, modern slavery, and corpses for rent are all day to day events within these pages. Translated from native languages such as DRC’s Lingala to Portuguese written in deepest Brazilian slang, this collection goes to places which are, for most of us, completely impenetrable. Some of today’s most renowned scientists, economists, architects and urban planners have turned their attention to the megacity in order to understand pressing contemporary dilemmas. It can be difficult, however, when we read their criticism of demographics, economics, infrastructure and environment, to imagine the individual amongst the teeming masses. MEGACITY redresses this problem: giving the reader a many-faceted sense of the megacity character, their stories and their settings. “Megacities are the super-novas of human social evolution, non-encompassable in their totality but fertile with conflicting futures. In this stunning anthology, local writers describe life within these gigantic urban landscapes as paradoxes of paradise and the inferno” - Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Planet of the Slums
Authors
Ahmed Naji is an independent researcher and cultural consultant specialising in modern and contemporary Iraqi art. Naji focuses on research and documentation of public art, museum and private collections, and related literature from articles to catalogues and books. Between 2005 and 2008 Naji worked at the Iraq Memory Foundation in Baghdad on various aspects of documentation and research of documents, oral history of victims and survivors and arts and artefacts under the rule of the Ba'th regime from 1968 to 2003. He was also a cultural advisor for the Public Affairs Office at the US Embassy in Baghdad. Later, Naji served as the founding Executive Officer of the London-based cultural centre of the Humanitarian Dialogue Foundation in 2009 to 2012. He collaborated with several charitable and cultural projects, and his work has been featured in several news articles such as BBC News, LA Times and The Art Newspaper. He is the author of Under the Palm Trees: Modern Iraqi Art with Mohamed Makiya and Jewad Selim (Rizzoli New York) which discusses the trajectory of Iraqi art through the prominent art collection of the late pioneer architect Mohamed Makiya (1914-2015). Naji also contributed an essay on pioneer Iraqi artist Jewad Selim for Bagdad Mon Amour exhibition book.
DANIEL SALDAÑA PARÍS (Ciudad de México, 1984) escribe narrativa y poesía. Es autor del libro de poemas La máquina autobiográfica (Bonobos Editores, 2012) y de la novela En medio de extrañas víctimas (Sexto Piso, 2013). Ha sido becario del FONCA en los programas Jóvenes Creadores (2006-2007) y Residencias Artísticas (2012), así como de la Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas (2007-2009). En 2012 antologó y prologó Doce en punto. Poesía chilena reciente y Un nuevo modo. Antología de narrativa mexicana actual, ambos publicados por la UNAM. En 2014 fue escritor en residencia en Ledig House-OMI International Arts Center (Nueva York). Fue elegido por el Hay Festival, el British Council y Conaculta como uno de los 20 escritores menores de 40 años para representar a México en la Feria del Libro de Londres en 2015.
Hideo Furukawa is a novelist based in Tokyo. He has received the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, the Japan SF Grand Prize, and the Yukio Mishima Award. (from http://cup.columbia.edu/book/horses-h...)
Jessica Zafra (born 1965) is a fiction writer, columnist, editor, publisher and former television and radio show host. She is known for her sharp and witty writing style. Her most popular books are the Twisted series, a collection of her essays as a columnist for newspaper Today (now Manila Standard Today), as well as from her time as editor and publisher of the magazine Flip. She currently writes a weekly column for The Philippine Star which is called, Emotional Weather Report. She resides in Metro Manila, Philippines, where she is working on her first novel. She also managed the Eraserheads during the 90's. Her work often are about current events (both Philippine and international), tennis, movies, music, cats, books, technology and her personal life. Her work has been the subject of academic study. The main ingredient to her work is often fun cynicism and irony. Find out more about her here.
