archive

  • Umm Ahmed: Newsflash

    A rare and incredibly moving piece of fiction from Gaza, from writer and activist Nayrouz Qarmout

  • Writing, recreating, surviving

    Tomás González writes for PEN Atlas about the act of literary creation, the qualms over writing about family tragedy, and how one shocking night on a beach in Colombia changed his life

  • A Golden Age for the African Short Story

    On 14 July 2014, Okwiri Oduor became the 15th winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, for her short story ‘My Father’s Head’, making her the third Kenyan winner of the Prize

  • Horror and words  

    Michel Laub, author of Diary of the Fall, writes for PEN Atlas on the importance of defining a vocabulary of atrocity

  • The shot at Sarajevo

    Bosnian writer Alma Lazarevska ruminates on the events that triggered the First World War

  • The five stereotypes of Tibet

    What’s the story behind the romance and propaganda surrounding Tibet?

  • The erotic and revolutionary poetry of Afghanistan

    Amid recent election controversies, Bashir Sakhwaraz writes about Afghan women’s poetry

  • Playing Vietnamese

    For PEN Atlas this week Mariusz Szczygieł writes about the strange case of a Vietnamese literary prodigy in the Czech Republic who proved that fact is stranger than fiction

  • Who wants to kill a million?

    To inaugurate the publication of Syria Speaks, which will be touring UK bookshops, universities, refugee centres and schools, co-editor Malu Halasa writes for PEN Atlas about the uprising, the bravery and black humour of the activists, and how a satirical cartoon and finger puppets inspired the collection

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Joël Dicker, author of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

    Tasja Dorkofikis talks to Joël Dicker about his literary and geographic inspirations, his method of plotting, and his novel in translation that has been a huge bestseller around the world

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Joël Dicker, author of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

    Tasja Dorkofikis talks to Joël Dicker about his literary and geographic inspirations, his method of plotting, and his novel in translation that has been a huge bestseller around the world

  • Kiev’s Militant Spring

    Alexei Nikitin writes for PEN Atlas about the tense atmosphere in Kiev, where the café-goers listening to jazz and the remaining protesters on the Maidan barricades await further news from the east of the country

  • Finding the sworn virgin

    Elvira Dones takes PEN Atlas to the mountains of Albania, where the story of an ancient custom, ideas about gender, and the resilient women who subverted both, helped the author to find a connection back to her homeland

  • Who invented the graphic novel?

    Ahead of European Literature Night, and the forthcoming British Library exhibition on comics, Paul Gravett writes about the history of the term ‘graphic novel’

  • The Greatest Turkish Novel?

    Kaya Genç discusses the cultural and literary legacy of Hamdi Tanpınar whose 1961 novel ‘The Time Regulation Institute’ was published this year as a Penguin Classic.

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Otto Dov Kulka

    PEN Atlas talks to Otto Dov Kulka, author of Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Otto Dov Kulka

    PEN Atlas talks to Otto Dov Kulka, author of Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death

  • To start all over again

    Santiago Gamboa writes a special PEN Atlas dispatch this week to commemorate Gabriel García Márquez, the way that he changed literature, and the deep love for his books from everyday readers to presidents

  • The apricot border with Russia, or separatism on Skype

    With the growing troubles in Ukraine, poet and dramatist Liubov Iakymchuk writes for PEN Atlas

  • North Korean love poetry

    Shirley Lee writes for PEN Atlas, in a week when Korea is the Market Focus for London Book Fair 2014