In Kindling, Meienberg writes of diverse acts of violence, harsh realities and broken dreams. There is the alleged Allied victory in the Gulf War, presented as cleanly fought, and the rise of fundamentalism in Algeria; there is the misery in the Maghreb and the racism in the Paris banlieues; the collapse of Marxist thought and the rapid growth of esotericism; the ethnic cleansing in Karabakh, which we have grown accustomed to; our habituation to the everyday slaughter in Bosnia and the death of his mother. The essay collection also contains a letter to Salman Rushdie, living under the threat of a fatwa, and another to the editor-in-chief of Oslobodenje in Sarajevo, a man producing a newspaper in deadly danger.