The nine essays in this general issue of Mosaic consider authoritarian governments in relation to the etymology of utopias; examine the demands that Samuel Beckett’s and Paul Hindemith’s antithetical art places on their respective audience; and argue that Hugh Hood and Martin Boyd challenge assumptions about postcolonial Commonwealth countries. Other essays in the issue focus on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, Othello, D.H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht and Max Frisch, and Surrealism.