蜜芽传媒

In Arifa Akbar's new book about the night the singing of prayers for the world at midnight brings unexpected beauty and truth to the darkness. Manjinder Virk reads.

Arifa Akbar, writer and theatre critic, takes us on a personal and artistic journey into the night where she explores how darkness, especially for women, has shaped our minds, society and culture.

Wolf Moon is an elegant exploration of the night, which considers how the darkness is largely understood as a time for nightmares and fear, especially for women. So, she looks at the fearfulness invoked by murderous predators like the nineteenth century's Ripper, and of what it means to be a homeless woman when night falls. Yet, in this her latest book, Arifa Akbar reminds us that the night is also full of beauty and possibility. It鈥檚 a time for joy and for fun from London's Theatreland to a hedonistic nightclub in Berlin, and by contrast, she visits a convent, where an order of nuns wake at the midnight to sing their elegiac prayers for the world. She also travels to Svalbard to experience a place where night is absent and finds perpetual daytime unsettling. In sum, Wolf Moon is a reflective and thoughtful consideration of what happens after the sun has set.

Arifa Akbar is a theatre critic, a trustee of the Orwell Foundation and English PEN. She is currently a fellow of the London Centre for the Humanities. Her first book, is the acclaimed memoir, Consumed.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard