Dearest Readers:

I just finished a piece that will go up at Spectator before the end of the week. Once published, I will happily share it with you here.

I am also going through my diaries from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. I'm a regular Anais Nin; it embarrasses me now but perhaps it is still of literary, even historical value. The handwritten versions and the early transcriptions are fragile, delicate. I believe I began this diary-keeping in Kabul in 1961. It begins: "Asia was not in Kabul that day. The drive home managed to bypass it. Nothing squatted or sprawled on the streets; there were no men sitting drugged in tea houses listening to music. There was no noise, no dust, no death, only quiet, sunny avenues lined with high walls behind which I knew were gardens and carpeted homes.....

I quote very liberally from Proust, Baudelaire, Stendhal, E.M. Forster, Rimbaud, Verlaine--my mainstay companions during a perilous time.

But on a different note entirely: Here is a Foreword that I wrote for a very important book: Women of the Asylum: Voices From Behind The Walls, 1840-1945. I used to call for films to be made about each of these women.

Link: https://phyllis-chesler.com/articles/women-of-the-asylum