With Love - Online edition

Read My World asked ten writers from around the world to write letters of comfort in these times of crisis.

They reflect on a post pandemic age, search for beauty and solidarity and find intimacy in distance. Together they show the wide-ranging worldwide impact of this crisis. The letters are illustrated by international artists and printed in a unique way.

  • “To write is to enter a dark space and find that you are not alone.”

    Letter from New Orleans

  • “The swallow I raised on my wrist and which returned at my father’s funeral now taps at my window bearing his face.”

    Letter from Haifa

  • “This period, while nerve-wracking for many of us, is, in my view, an opportunity to shift our focus to appreciate what really matters.”

    Letter from Paris

  • “What all the aunts and mothers never succeeded in doing, did happen through a microscopic piece of genetic material enveloped in a thin layer of fat. I baked roti’s last week.”

    Letter from Paramaribo

  • “Language has not come to me, but rather I have gone towards it, crawling like a small child, seeking it under things, corners, my fingers searching for sparks, for soft squishy things, for sound.”

    Letter from Kuala Lumpur

  • “Public remembering in Germany sometimes feels like a redemption story.”

    Letter from Berlin

  • “The social body is on the ground. I set myself the task of reanimating it.”

    Letter from Rome

  • “Perhaps to be silent is the closest one can come to realising what it means to be a human being, in the primitive, noble sense.”

    Letter from Bruxelles

  • “Did I spit out one extra frog from my mouth or did it stay inside me?”

    Letter from Istanbul

  • “What if I told you that I could teach you a dance that you could dance forever?”

    Letter from New York