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To write? Because all this is going to vanish. The only thing left will be the prose and poems, the books, what is written down. Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.

Through all of this they continued to document their remote working life on social media. The pictures were always stunning, enticing—prickly pear groves, Camparis on red plastic beach tables, sunsets over vineyards, carved tufa limestone facades, stray cats, their laptops usually somewhere in the …

There was still the coast, of course, but somehow even that was different from how they had pictured it. The fishing villages had no fishermen in them, and the little bars around the main piazza weren’t patronized by old people playing cards but by groups of teenagers with ripped bodies and blaring…

THEY COULDN’T SAY EXACTLY what had changed after the immediate urgency of the migration crisis passed. In many ways, life carried on as normal. They worked. They attended openings. They partied. They could still be captivated by the beauty of the sun shining down on the Fernsehturm, framed by a slo…

THE FUTURE APPEARED out of focus. They couldn’t imagine it being substantially different from their current life—so smooth and manicured—which itself made it seem rather abstract and unenticing. They had grown up in the shadow of the turbulent sixties and seventies; their grandparents had lived thr…