• Coffee Corner

    Coffee Corner

    Bushra al-Maqtari on how Sana’a, Yemen, has changed. Translated by Sawad Hussain.

  • 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

  • On #OccupyGezi, the Turkish Government prefers conspiracy theories to engagement

    Oray Egin reports on Turkey’s ‘dissident witch hunt’. On Monday 5th August 2013, Turkish courts finally reached a decision on the most controversial trial to date. The Ergenekon investigation, which was launched in 2007, initially aimed to disclose an alleged clandestine organization that plots to overthrow the government. But over time, the investigation widened to…

  • Our man in Berkhamsted

    Kaya Genç introduces PEN Atlas readers to Şavkar Altınel: travel writer, inspiration for a famous literary character, translator of famous British poets and resident of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire

  • Writing in the Language of ‘the Other’

    In another fascinating piece for PEN Atlas, Gazmend Kapllani recounts his journey through languages, the difficulties and opportunities of being a multi-lingual author and how the language of the Other goes back to Homer and the birth of storytelling

  • Recommended Summer Reading in Translation from PEN Atlas

    Need a good book to go with the good weather? In the lead-up to this evening’s English PEN Summer Party, Marina Warner, James Meek, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Blake Morrision, and many more offer their tips for what to read in translation this summer   D.J. Taylor I’d like to recommend Stefan Chwin’s Death in Danzig, translated…

  • A wind blows from Gezi Park

    This week PEN Atlas returns to Turkey for an update on Gezi Park. Müge İplikçi reflects on recent events and draws parallels between the stifling of Gezi Park activists and the ongoing stifling of Turkish writers, who work in a system in which profit is the only validation.