Nudists, peaceniks and freeloading travellers: the people keeping the Esperanto dream alive

Esperanto had always seemed to me like an idealistic movement that had failed. So why was its annual congress so vibrant and full of young people? The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. Click here to order One day, as a 16-year-old in the late 2000s, I received an AOL instant message from my friend Kenyon. He wanted to know whether I had heard of Esperanto, the universal language. Kenyon was several years older than me, and something of a mentor. Like me, he was a musician –...

By Katie Thornton