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Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
When I first read the title of our panel, what immediately came to mind was an episode from the last day of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. Those of you… More
In Search of the Sensual: Hanan al-Shaykh & Salman Rushdie
One of the sad things about the modernist way is that there’s a disconnect with the old tradition. The same thing happened in India. There are old temples with… More
A History of Trauma
KHALED MATTAWA: What’s ringing in my ear now is the adverb “originally,” and I want to discuss with Hanan and Fadhil the issue of origins. My question for them… More
Enormous Changes: Ha Jin & Eliot Weinberger
ELIOT WEINBERGER: Your life has had such an amazing trajectory from semi-literate Chinese soldier to distinguished American novelist in such a short amount of time. You joined the army… More
Africa and the World: Writers at Home and Away
BREYTEN BREYTENBACH: If one mentions the word “Africa” in a global context, it tends to evoke many responses and perhaps even some obsessions. People tend to project on the… More
Inappropriate Appropriation
RICK MOODY: I think the pressing question of the PEN World Voices Festival is “Why, exactly, are we bothering?” The United States of America has become a culture that… More
Postcolonial Passages: Assia Djebar & Lyone Trouillot
"Postcolonial Passages," with Assia Djebar and Lyone Trouillot, appears in PEN America 7: World Voices. This talk was presented, in slightly different form, at the 2005 PEN World Voices… More
Reinventing Home
MICHAEL ONDAATJE: In Purple Hibiscus, on the acknowledgments page at the end, there’s a wonderful sense of community—I almost want you to read that because it feels like part… More
Continental Divides
I’ll begin by reading from my book Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna:During the middle of the night, I woke to this huge sound—like rain,… More
Elif Shafak: Crossover Artists: Writing in Another Language
I want to talk about how I made the journey from the Turkish to the English language. Before doing that, I would like to draw a historical framework—how literature… More