Early on a weekday morning the graveyard was deserted. A Turkish man my age and I were pleasantly surprised to find we were not alone. I lit my candle next to the fresh flowers, we exchanged stories, agreed the world is in difficult straits. „She was a reliable fighter“, he said, and I of course agreed. I kept thinking about his words afterwards – I mean really, in the end what more could you want anyone to say about you?

Die Zeit:

Sahra Wagenknecht hat das Vorgehen von Israels Premier Netanjahu in Rafah als Kriegsverbrechen verurteilt. Der Ampelkoalition warf sie vor, dies direkt zu unterstützen.

Deutsche Linkspolitikerin und BSW-Vorsitzende Sahra Wagenknecht © John Macdougall/​AFP/​Getty Images

Israels Regierung führe einen „blutigen Rachefeldzug in Gaza, der mit legitimer Selbstverteidigung schon lange nichts mehr zu tun hat“, sagte Wagenknecht.

[Peter] Reddaway has emphasized that modern Russian political life cannot be understood without reference to „political technology,“ which represents an extreme form of political consultancy involving manipulation of individuals and large-scale deception. Since, Reddaway explained, at the core of any „political technologist’s“ plan, there lies a conspiracy, any good analyst of Russian politics needs to be a conspiracy theorist as well. Conspiracy theorists, he noted, are usually mocked in countries with transparent political systems. But a system becomes more prone to conspiracies if the ruler remains in power for a long time and controls large parts of its wealth. Russia and Iran, he observed, would be two examples of present-day countries with conspiratorial politics.

—John B. Dunlop, The Moscow Bombings of September 1999, (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2012), 17-18.

For me personally the bombings of the apartment houses are a key moment in our most recent history. Because if those bombings were not accidental in the sequence of the events which followed; if, to put it bluntly, they were the work of our [Russian] authorities—then everything will once and forever take its proper place. Then there is not and cannot be an iota of illusion about [the nature of] those who rule us. Then those people are not minor or large-scale swindlers and thieves. Then they are among the most terrible of criminals.

—Anton Orekh, in John B. Dunlop, The Moscow Bombings of September 1999, (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2012), 7.

Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014