Longform’s Picks of the Week

Every weekend, Longform highlights its favorite international articles of the week. For daily picks of new and classic nonfiction, check out Longform or follow @longform on Twitter. Have an iPad? Download Longform’s new app and read all of the latest in-depth stories from dozens of magazines, including Foreign Policy.

“Corruption and Revolt” by Patrick Radden Keefe, the New Yorker.

Does tolerating graft undermine national security?

“Definitions of corruption tend to focus on the conflict of interest that arises when private imperatives intrude upon the public sphere. Robert Klitgaard, an economist who has done field work on corruption in dozens of countries, once posited a formula: Corruption = Monopoly Power + Discretion – Accountability. In Klitgaard’s reckoning, corruption is a crime of calculation. If that’s the case, shouldn’t the problem be susceptible to rational solutions? Any country could simply take Singapore as a blueprint and tinker with the variables, as Lee Kuan Yew did, recalibrating the risk/reward ratio for officials who might feel inclined to betray their office. Scholars and activists who focus on corruption often describe the problem as one that might eventually be eradicated, like smallpox. Even Noonan concludes his sprawling chronicle of millennia of graft on an improbably hopeful note, arguing that, just as slavery was once widely accepted and is now reviled, bribery may one day ‘become obsolete.'”

“Why A Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea” by Maggie Jones, the New York Times Magazine.

A movement is raising soul-searching questions about international adoption.

“Klunder, who was raised in Wisconsin, moved back to South Korea in 2011, which is where I met her one night last February along with three of her friends, all adoptees from the United States. We were at a restaurant in the Hongdae section of Seoul, known for its galleries, bars and cheap restaurants. Outside, the streets teemed with university students, musicians, artists and clubbers. The neighborhood is also a popular spot for the approximately 300 to 500 adoptees who have moved to South Korea — primarily from the United States but also from France, Denmark and other nations. Most lack fluency in the language and possess no memories of the country they left when they were young. But they are back, hoping for a sense of connection — to South Korea, to their birth families, to other adoptees.”

“Robert Saviano: My Life Under Armed Guard” by Robert Saviano, the Guardian.

For eight years, the journalist Roberto Saviano has faced constant threat of death for exposing the secrets of the Naples mafia in his book Gomorrah. Is the price of life under armed guard too much for a writer to pay?

“If I want to travel abroad, I have to inform the government security department weeks or even months in advance, exactly where I am going and what my schedule will be. Where I will stay, the places I’ll visit, the people I’ll be meeting. Then I have to wait for permission to travel – to find out if the country I want to visit considers me welcome. When I’m there, it takes a few days to establish a rapport with the local police escort. At the beginning, there’s a sense that I’m an inconvenience, a burden, a problem to manage, especially when there’s a public event.

I don’t trust anyone any more. I’m afraid of getting close to someone and letting my guard down. I’m always expecting people to let me down. It’s the usual prisoner’s paranoia.”

“‘I Don’t Know If I’m Already Infected.’ The Controversial Death of Ebola’s Unsung Hero” by Joshua Hammer, Matter.

He was a globally renowned expert in tropical diseases, and the hero who ran Sierra Leone’s worst Ebola ward. So why, when he finally fell ill, was he denied the extraordinary treatments that could have saved him?

“Khan knew the risks better than almost anyone else in the world. Born in Mahera, a village of muddy roads across an estuary from Freetown, to a schoolmaster, he and his nine brothers and sisters grew up under firm rules. The elder Khan was a ‘strict disciplinarian,’ recalls Humarr’s older brother C. Ray, who used a switch on his children and insisted they be held back a year if they finished below the top five in their class. But the rules weren’t without purpose. The Khans often offered to board poor children who lived too far away to walk to the school every day. ‘His father was intent on making sure that all kids could attend school,’ says one of Khan’s close friends. ‘The mother would make clothes for all those needy families who didn’t have any. Every week, they would invite some individual from the community to have dinner with them — someone very poor, or someone with medical problems.'”

“This Is Not Your Father’s Hezbollah” by Susannah George, Foreign Policy.

Corruption in the ranks. Spies in their midst. Discipline problems. How the Syrian war is changing Lebanon’s most infamous militia.

“Lebanon has been hit by more than a dozen attacks claimed by groups in Syria with links to al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Most recently, a group linked to al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in a cafe in the northern city of Tripoli that killed at least nine people. Car bombs have also targeted Hezbollah strongholds in the suburbs of Beirut and in the eastern Bekaa Valley. While Israel has largely remained on the sidelines of the Syrian conflict, the Israel Defense Forces have allegedly attacked Hezbollah positions inside Syria on a number of occasions, reportedly in an attempt to prevent the group from obtaining sensitive arms shipments.”

Reveendran, AFP; AFP; Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images; Tiziana Fabi, AFP; Carl de Souza, AFP; Mahmoud Zayyar/AFP/Getty Images