• Coffee Corner

    Coffee Corner

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

  • The Earthquake Method

    From constant earthquakes to a Borges story, Giorgio Vasta’s dispatch for PEN Atlas offers an original, honest and illuminating take on the current state of Italy and its politics

  • The Achebe I Knew

    Ahead of the Africa Writes festival 2013 (5-7 July) PEN Atlas hears from African writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on his friend and mentor Chinua Achebe.

  • The present of the past of things

    Patricio Pron writes a moving piece for PEN Atlas, about an encounter in a small German city that made him reflect on collective guilt, individual responsibility and the nature of the past, both for a person and a country

  • On the sublimation of authority

    Hakan Günday unpacks the notion of authority and censorship, and considers its effects on civilians

  • The Art of the Novella

    In this week’s second PEN Atlas dispatch, Meike Ziervogel from Peirene Press makes the case for the novella, charting the history of the form, and reflecting on her experience publishing great novellas in translation from around Europe

  • The Walnut Tree of Gezi Park

    Following recent events, PEN Atlas is running an additional dispatch this week from Turkey. Kaya Genç writes for us about Nâzım Hikmet Ran, whose poem ‘The Walnut Tree’ has taken on both a prophetic turn and an inspirational one in light of Gezi Park

  • The Sounds of Istanbul

    In the latest of our literary dispatches from Turkey, Mario Levi contemplates the sounds of the city he grew up in, and the stories that lie behind them for those willing to listen.

  • Taking a stand

    Oray Egin reports on the continuing protests in Turkey, why they began in Gezi Park and what the writers of the country owe to those marching on the streets

  • The Tale of Two Adrians

    Strange coincidences bring together two literary traditions in today’s PEN Atlas piece by Oksana Zabuzhko, which explores Ukrainian and Eastern European authors, their debt to history and their unjustly hidden classics

  • Turning up the volume

    Yasmine El Rashidi, contributor to the PEN-award-winning title Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus, tells PEN Atlas about growing up learning English: exile and community, being alienated and finding her voice

  • The Mussel Feast

    Birgit Vanderbeke introduces PEN Atlas readers to her book The Mussel Feast and her experience of penning such a controversial work at a poignant time in German history

  • A Little Honey

    This week’s PEN Atlas features a moving piece of writing by Jáchym Topol about a man and his ailing mother

  • What’s authentic about global literature?

    Michele Hutchison investigates what the future might hold for the 21st Century novel: provincial literature with a global reach, or the literature of the cosmopolitan flâneur?

  • What's authentic about global literature?

    Michele Hutchison investigates what the future might hold for the 21st Century novel: provincial literature with a global reach, or the literature of the cosmopolitan flâneur?

  • What is a country?

    Following her visit to the UK last week for the London Book Fair Turkey Market Focus, Ece Temelkuran reflects on ‘Writing Turkey’ and what the term ‘country’ has come to represent for her.

  • Stolen Eyes

    In advance of his UK tour this week, acclaimed writer and painter Mahi Binebine treats PEN Atlas readers to a short story

  • Translation, Revolution, and Pedagogy

    Following her appearance at the Literary Translation Centre for London Book Fair 2013, Samia Mehrez writes about working collaboratively on the book Translating Egypt’s Revolution: The Language of Tahrir, which uses multiple perspectives to translate the linguistic and cultural meanings of the momentous events in her country

  • New frontiers for translated fiction

    Jonathan Ruppin writes for PEN Atlas about the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, what it can tell us about the context of translated fiction in the present and which names to keep an eye out for in the future

  • The Silk Road

    In the run-up to London Book Fair 2013, for which Turkey is the market focus, Murathan Mungan writes for PEN Atlas about how East and West view each other, what Henry James could have learnt from Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil and the building of a new Tower of Babel

  • What is Official? Turkish writing, from state discourse to civil literature

    As part of our ongoing series of PEN Atlas dispatches from Turkey, Kaya Genç describes the struggle for the soul of his country’s literature between state officials and independent creative writers