Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Oliver Basciano

@olibasciano.bsky.social

640 followers 280 following 270 posts

Writing, reporting, criticising. Mostly in south of the world. OUTCAST: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World is out now. You can buy it here: https://linktr.ee/oliverbasciano

linktr.ee

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · Jun 19

Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World is published today. It tells the 4000 year history of the disease and its stigma, and the remarkable lives of those affected past and present. I am very proud of it, and beyond thankful to those who told their story.

My book Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World, photographed on a yellow surface. The cover of the book features map contours and two abstract blue and yellow patches, that could be landmasses or bacteria under a microscope.

4 13 26

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 23h

From the much-missed TWR: George Szirtes interviews Krasznahorkai www.thewhitereview.org/feature/inte...

Interview with László Krasznahorkai - The White Review

László Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954, and has written five novels and several collections of essays and short stories. Until recently, at least in the English-speaking world, he wa...

www.thewhitereview.org

Reposted by Oliver Basciano

Harare Review of Books @hararereview.bsky.social · 2d

Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World x Oliver Basciano hararereview.wordpress.com/2025/10/08/o...

Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World x Oliver Basciano

320. June 17, 2025, Faber and Faber. Non-fiction. It took me longer than normal to read this book; in certain places it’s really hard to get through—for empath reasons. It shows so clearly how huma…

hararereview.wordpress.com

1 1 3

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 23h

Thank you for taking the time to read and for your beautiful thoughts on the book!

1 1

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 23h

Heartened by @hararereview.bsky.social 's description of Outcast: "Fascinating and expansive, you’ll likely never read anything more magisterial. If you read just one non-fiction/history book this year, make it this one".

Taking this as my Nobel.

hararereview.wordpress.com/2025/10/08/o...

Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World x Oliver Basciano

hararereview.wordpress.com

2 4

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 23h

Bang on solid Nobel lit choice that.

1 2

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 2d

I will forever lap up 'academics and scientists find out they have got the Nobel in slightly comic or heart warming fashion'.

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 3d

Always stand up to bullies.

Tom Phillips @tomphillips.bsky.social · 3d

"I had a great talk with the president of Brazil. He's a good man ... Yeah, we'll start doing business" - Trump on Lula just now 👀

Reposted by Oliver Basciano

Dr Surekha Davies (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 7d

The pope got mansplained the Bible.

worm @rfksbrainworm.bsky.social · 8d

really enjoying all the people trying to explain the bible to the pope today

Pope Leo XIV
Today, more than ever, we must return to the heart, the center of feeling and emotion, the locus of freedom. Though it includes reason, the heart transcends and transforms it. Only by returning to the heart can we undergo a true ecological conversion that transforms our personal

Austin
I reject this whole heartedly. What you fail to see Mr Pope, the Bible says

1 1 15

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 8d

PRs! Top tip! If your client can't be trusted to speak, don't say they are too busy for an interview but will reply to written questions. Clearly the latter takes far longer.

Anyway. No.

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 13d

If it is the island I think it probably is, D'Arcy, it has a very dark history: many Chinese labourers ended up there in C19th, "accused" of having leprosy, basically to get rid of them after they had laid Canada's railways (I'm simplifying for brevity!).

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 14d

Vietnam won with this cybergoth trad rapper www.youtube.com/watch?v=bySi...

PHÙ ĐỔNG THIÊN VƯƠNG - ĐỨC PHÚC | 🇻🇳 VIỆT NAM | WINNER OF THE INTERVISION 2025

YouTube video by ĐỨC PHÚC OFFICIAL

www.youtube.com

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 14d

Brazil sadly came last in this year's Intervision, the song contest established by Russia after they were thrown out of Eurovision. Despte the act really leaning into "being Brazilian". www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JJl...

Luciano Calazans & Tais Nader - Pipoca com Amor (LIVE) | Brazil 🇧🇷 | Intervision’25

YouTube video by INTERVISION 2025

www.youtube.com

1 1

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 15d

Nick Hedges was never sure if anything had really improved, but his photographs for Shelter were pivotal in improving post-war housing. www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...

Nick Hedges, photographer whose exposé of slums in 1960s Britain changed housing policy

Using his photographs, the charity Shelter lobbied for the official numbers of homeless to include those in homes ‘unfit for habitation’

www.telegraph.co.uk

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 15d

As did the life of Pop artist Peter Phillips: all swinging sixties japes. www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...

Peter Phillips, ‘most straightforward’ of the pioneers of British Pop art

In 1965 he invented a faux market research company which sent out 137 ‘research kits’ to create the consensus-led perfect ‘art object’

www.telegraph.co.uk

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 15d

Writing Doris Lockhart Saatchi for Telegraph, collector who opened her husband Charles Saatchi’s eyes to art, had a dash of glamour. www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...

Doris Lockhart Saatchi, collector who opened her husband Charles Saatchi’s eyes to art

One art dealer recalled a Rolls-Royce pulling up to his gallery, Charles in tennis shorts, Doris a ‘beautiful blonde girl in a mink coat’

www.telegraph.co.uk

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 15d

More fun was trying to fit the life of artist, novelist, playwright and wrestler Rosalyn Drexler into 900 words. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Rosalyn Drexler obituary

Artist, novelist, playwright and wrestler whose pop art collages dealt with gender violence and racism

www.theguardian.com

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 15d

ArtReview also posted a very nice tribute to him artreview.com/john-morgan-...

John Morgan, designer and typographer, 1973–2025

Morgan, who designed ArtReview in its present incarnation, will be remembered as an inspiration, collaborator and friend of the magazine

artreview.com

1 1 1

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 15d

Wrote a few obits recently. Perhaps the saddest personally being for John Morgan, the graphic designer (including of ArtReview). You can read that here in the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

John Morgan obituary

Graphic designer who dispensed with the traditional prayer book aesthetic in Common Worship for the Church of England and produced lettering for HMS Victory

www.theguardian.com

1 2

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 19d

Worked out what's going on.

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 20d

This is apropos this by the way. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s...

‘The epitome of amazingness’: how electroclash brought glamour, filth and fun back to 00s music

Witty, foul-mouthed, camp and punky, it was the 00s answer to slick superclubs and the rock patriarchy. As its rough, raw sound returns, the scene’s eyeliner-ed heroes, from Peaches to Jonny Slut, rel...

www.theguardian.com

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 20d

I realise this is a very Steve Wright Radio 2 post, which is probably where Fischerspooner gets played now.

1 2

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 20d

I went to the first Nag Nag Nag, and then most weeks thereafter. On the second week I chatted up a nice looking boy, There was no plan I'd be living with him and a dog twenty-three years later in Brazilian mountains, but I guess these things happen.

1 5

Oliver Basciano @olibasciano.bsky.social · 20d

Currently reading Mircea Cărtărescu and revelling in the fact I have no idea what's going on most of the time. Just a massive wave of post-war (set) Romanian brilliant madness.

gochenourabout @sjgochenour.bsky.social · 21d

question: how much does it bother you in a book if you don’t quite understand what’s going on? what measures do you take to remedy this lack of understanding? what novels most rewarded your further investigation?

2 1 4

Reposted by Oliver Basciano

Ann Boo-uise Deslandes 👻 @anndlandes.bsky.social · 22d

"The operating orthodoxy was that police killings, CIA coups, black site torture, and institutional misogyny were aberrations, deviations from the American norm that would eventually be corrected when the arc of the moral universe, long as it is, finally got around to them."

Sabrina Imbler @sabs.bsky.social · 22d

if you read one thing today, make it this absolutely devastating piece from a fact-checker who quit the New Yorker
bidoun.org/articles/hou...

Though the man’s killing had been filmed, a fact checker is obliged to seek comment from any party alleged to have committed a crime. I called the soldier’s lawyer. He picked up from a café, where I could hear trance music blasting in the background. The lawyer told me that while, yes, his client did shoot the man picking olives, and yes, the man did die, the Israeli military court found his client not guilty of murder because the man picking olives was a terrorist who was throwing stones. Even though the video did not show the Palestinian man throwing stones, the court said that he was, so he was. QED, his client did not murder anyone, and it would be slanderous for us to say so.

1 3 2

Reposted by Oliver Basciano

Sabrina Imbler @sabs.bsky.social · 22d

if you read one thing today, make it this absolutely devastating piece from a fact-checker who quit the New Yorker
bidoun.org/articles/hou...

6 730 1.7K