archive

  • A literature in search of its language

    Ciwanmerd Kulek charts the ongoing struggle for the Kurdish language, and whether being a language that is now more written than spoken threatens it in new and troubling ways

  • The duty to write

    Journalist-turned-freedom-fighter Mikail Eldin writes for PEN Atlas on his experience of the Chechen wars

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, winner of the Jan Michalski Prize 2013

    Following his recent award of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi answers questions from Tasja Dorkofikis for PEN Atlas, charting the works, influences and world-view of Iran’s most important living writer

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, winner of the Jan Michalski Prize 2013

    Following his recent award of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi answers questions from Tasja Dorkofikis for PEN Atlas, charting the works, influences and world-view of Iran’s most important living writer

  • On Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, winner of the Jan Michalski Prize

    Sahar Delijani charts the career of Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, winner of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize, and how his work has forged the conscience of his nation. Sahar’s PEN Atlas piece precedes an exclusive Q&A with Mahmoud Dowlatabadi tomorrow

  • Any questions for the author?

    Jacek Dehnel writes a taxonomy of the literary event attendee, including ‘the star’, ‘the obsessive’, ‘the well-meaning person’ and ‘the fixer’, all of whom keep life interesting – and strange – for the travelling author

  • Notes from a Safe House in Area A

    Selma Dabbagh returns to PEN Atlas, and to Ramallah, writing about the physical and bureaucratic walls that divide the territory, recording the sounds of the Old City, and exploring the impact of the Oslo Peace Accords on Palestinian literature

  • The ancestors who never left

    What happens when an oral culture is colonised and dominated by a written one? Laura Burns explores the Native authors of North America, and how their work crosses and transcends the boundary between the written and spoken, with stories that reinvigorate the present with the past

  • What next for Greece?

    Maria Margaronis writes for PEN Atlas on the complex and at times chaotic relationship between Greek media and the people of Greece, and what their future together might hold

  • Instructions for writing a corrupt novel

    Nepotism, sinecures, blackmailing paedophiles, bribing officials… Juan Pablo Villalobos writes for PEN Atlas this week, explaining how a writer can expose and enable the general corruption of his country

  • Three Years Old: the reality of publishing translated fiction

    What does the future hold for the publishing of literature in translation? Stefan Tobler from And Other Stories takes us through the independents, small presses and community interest companies using innovative ways to publish work from around the world

  • The hidden languages of Burma

    Following recent political reforms, Lucas Stewart investigates the impact on writers in the country, and whether there is real change in the air for ethnic literature and languages

  • PEN Atlas Q&A – Hanna Krall, author of Chasing the King of Hearts

    Finally available in the UK, Hanna Krall’s literary reportage about the Holocaust is unparalleled in its power and immediacy. Chasing the King of Hearts recreates the Holocaust not as an historical event but as a terrifying shared experience

  • PEN Atlas Q&A – Hanna Krall, author of Chasing the King of Hearts

    Finally available in the UK, Hanna Krall’s literary reportage about the Holocaust is unparalleled in its power and immediacy. Chasing the King of Hearts recreates the Holocaust not as an historical event but as a terrifying shared experience

  • Two stories by Sławomir Mrożek

    A special dispatch from PEN Atlas this week features two stories from Sławomir Mrożek, the Polish author and cartoonist who died recently, and will be remembered for his surreal and subversive work

  • Imagine – Writing fiction in Mexico

    Juan Pablo Villalobos returns to PEN Atlas this week, asking us to imagine the struggle of being a writer in Mexico, where fiction is so often outpaced by brutal reality

  • An ‘archival identity’

    This week PEN Atlas hears from Carmen Bugan, daughter of Romanian dissident Ion Bugan, on her discovery of previously classified files about her family that were kept by secret police

  • An 'archival identity'

    This week PEN Atlas hears from Carmen Bugan, daughter of Romanian dissident Ion Bugan, on her discovery of previously classified files about her family that were kept by secret police

  • To some I have talked with by the fire

    PEN Atlas this week features Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi, who takes us through the Great Pacific Trash Vortex, indigenous island tribes, and the ancient practice of storytelling – all of which inspired his first novel to be translated into English

  • Translations and Mutations

    Adam Thirlwell takes us through the utopian goals and surprising results of Multiples, an experiment in translation