A stunningly beautiful work of inquiry into what makes us human, what we can know about each other, and what makes life worth living in an increasingly dismal time.
To See Beyond
Our hyper-informed digital era of climate catastrophe, historically unmatched migration, and genocide confronts us with a terrible conundrum: the pain and struggles of others are more visible than ever, yet hostility and loneliness persist. It often seems that we are on the edge of ruin, and hope, though necessary, is elusive. How can we reconcile ourselves to the world we have made?
In To See Beyond, Anna Badkhen probes the ways we ward off despair as she imagines the language we need for survival. Through engagement with contemporary literature and stories of everyday encounters with people around the world, she brings us closer to understanding how we balance delight and grief, joy and hurt, and choose to embrace life as a form of resistance.
Orion Magazine “Recommendations” selection
Literary Hub “New Books” & “Most Anticipated Books” selections
Foreword Reviews “Book of the Day” selection
BookBrowse “Best New Books Publishing This Month” selection
Mrs. Dalloway’s “New Paperback Picks” selection
Seminary Co-op Bookstores “Front Table” selection
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781954276550
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781954276543
Anna Badkhen discusses radical hope in the face of climate change on The World and shares more of the stories behind To See Beyond with Shelf Unbound and Publishers Weekly, and on the Book Nook, Synergia, and Speaking Out of Place podcasts.
Tune in to Anna Badkhen’s playlist for To See Beyond at Largehearted Boy.
Preview essays from To See Beyond in Adi Magazine, Aeon, Agni, Compass, Emergence Magazine, Literary Hub, New York Review of Books, Orion, Pittsburgh Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, Words Without Borders, and World Literature Today.
Anna Badkhen is the author of eight books of nonfiction, including To See Beyond and Bright Unbearable Reality, longlisted for the National Book Award. Born in the Soviet Union and a former war correspondent, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award for Excellence in Peace and Justice Journalism, among other honors. She is an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia.
visit author page »Praise for To See Beyond
Anna Badkhen’s To See Beyond emerges from a life spent in proximity to catastrophe. . . . Everywhere she goes, Badkhen returns to questions of obligation and care—how people remain answerable to one another amid violence, and how intimate bonds sustain hope. . . . The book’s more persuasive argument is that careful noticing, sustained attention to the world and its inhabitants, remains one of humanity’s most essential ethical acts.
No book I have read in recent years is more relevant to our time, more insightful, more probing, more unsparing in its analysis or more generous of heart than To See Beyond. Anna Badkhen’s lifetime of deep reading and dangerous living has yielded these profoundly moving essays that range from Canary Islands myth to hunger stones, from ‘radical hope’ and child soldiers to micro-love and prayer beads and a lifejacket graveyard on Lesvos. Through it all, she insists on asking the common questions that unite us: How to dream, how to love, how to build a better world? If you’re looking for the answers, start with To See Beyond.
— Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Rasputin Swims the Potomac
In To See Beyond, Anna Badkhen wields language like a wide-eyed, percussive magician. There is little hand-holding here, thankfully. There is an exquisite exploration of where we are, how we are, who we refuse to become, and the cost of refusing to fight. The essay as a form and humans as a species need this offering.
— Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and Long Division
Badkhen takes us on a journey—one which will help us learn a new language—the language of survival. . . . This slim volume is packed with hope, pointing to a way forward.
— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)