Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
I write for papers in this country and abroad. Earlier in Iraq war, I was living in Italy, and a newspaper in the United States in New York asked… More
Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
Does the history of the last century offer much support for the view that the literary imagination has any special purchase on political wisdom? Can literature mitigate the pressures… More
Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
My greatest shock came not from critics proclaiming me a witch who deserved to be burned were it not for our civilized times, but from crowds of enthusiastic female… More
Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
As an Indian novelist, I find that literature’s relationship to power is particularly complex in countries like mine. Most developing countries are also formerly colonized countries, and one of… More
History of My Face
My lips came with a caravan of slavesThat belonged to the Grand Sanussi.In Al-Jaghbub he freed them.They still live in the poor section of BenghaziNear the hospital where I… More
Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
Literature is particularly unstable. It is that which is unstable, uncertain, which we don’t know how to label. Literary criticism can classify certain texts, but what the work of… More
Non-Military Statements
Non-Military Statements1Yes, I did write in my letterthat I would wait for you forever.I didn't mean exactly "forever,"I just included it in the rhyme.2No, he was not among them.There… More
Quixote at 400
We may have our own personal opinions of an average writer, but in front of Don Quixote, we are all interchangeable. Conscripts of fate line up in front of… More
Quixote at 400
You may imagine the boss as the President, the General Secretary, the Chief of Army, the boss of your marriage or of your building, whatever you think. You immediately… More
The Way We Love Now
As I was thinking about this, I began, as one obviously would, to think about the Pope. I have the TV on in my writing room and there was… More