Some highlights: “Hack Work,” Anthony Lane’s cheerfully knowing survey of the Murdoch empire and its influence on British life and “The Asylum Seeker,” Suketu Mehta’s matter-of-fact, dismaying report on asylum coaches who teach refugees how to embellish their stories of torture and abuse in order to stay in the U.S.
But more than anything else, I was mesmerized by Platon’s portfolio featuring the gleaming, gnarly, life-worn faces of Egyptians involved in this year’s uprising, such as 23-year-old Sarrah Abdel Rahman, an aspiring television journalist who made online videos from Tahrir Square:
And I must admit I was even more taken with Autumn Whitehurst’s illustration for Justin Torres’s surprising short story, “Reverting to a Wild State”:
another eye opens 