Case Histories: Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi, a psychiatrist and novelist writing in Arabic, is the author of more than 40 books, which have been translated, acclaimed, and awarded around the world. She delivered… More
Amitava Kumar: The Map of My Village
The house was in an alley, set away from the winding street, and in that house were three communists who, during my first visit, sold me a book and… More
The 1920s: PEN’s Founding and Early Years
Throughout the year, we’ll be celebrating PEN’s 90th anniversary by looking at the key events, cases, and characters from the organization’s history. As part of our online retrospective, we’ll… More
Unnatural Disasters
A reader’s mind is terraced by unwreckable geographies. No terrorist can bomb Kafka’s castle and its surrounding stone wend, no tornado can churn to dust O’Connor’s hot small towns.… More
Mahmoud Darwish: What is Lost
In exile you choose a space to tame habit, a private space for your journal. So you write: Place is not the trap. We can say: Here we have… More
PEN Remembers Envelope-Pushing Publisher and PEN Member Barney Rosset
PEN mourns the loss of maverick publisher, First Amendment crusader, and longtime member, Barney Rosset. He passed away in New York on February 21, at the age of 89.… More
An Island of Peace
Kings are in trouble. From presidents. The Buganda king is a waiter in London. Uganda is a picture on a map, shaped like the back of the bumpy head… More
Palimpsests
In most fiction, the aim is to convey the reader to actual and imaginary places, often a mix of the two; and if such places are rendered vividly enough—readers… More
Streets of Pittsburgh
When I was twenty-two, a small design firm in Pittsburgh hired me to make maps. That I had landed such excellent employment despite being a college dropout with no… More
Fatima Shaik: Translation, Semantics, and Race
In the 1950s, my father discovered a mountain of old journals on the back of a dump truck. He stored the journals in a closet because they were “very… More
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