‘This novel is structured around the relationship between silence and speaking. Silence is the major hero. People who have gone through terrible trauma don’t want to remember. It all needed time to come out, and now things are coming out.’
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The blind and the elephant: a conversation with Ahmed Saadawi and Jonathan Wright
‘People will fight another to assert the truth of their story. Novels tell us that in fact there isn’t one story. Everybody has a piece of a true story. It is like the story of the blind people and the elephant.’
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History, earned
In 2017 I needed reasons to stay alive. My family and friends wrapped their arms around me but they couldn’t always be there. But I had the gentle pace of baseball, the at-bat tactics to focus my mind.
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Hockey is for everyone
Barely a month after I was sexually assaulted, I stood in the ice hockey rink at a small prep school. The holiday tournaments were taking place and I’d foolishly agreed to go. It was too soon for me to be there, that much I knew.
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Editorial: on sport
Sport is emblematic of what goes on in society as a whole. In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we’ve looked at it as a method of inclusion – and exclusion. As a method of belonging as well as of extreme alienation.
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Power to the powerful
Money, power and politics are inherent to sporting events, yet the veil of economic progress, entertainment and sporting frenzy only serves to cover up a far darker reality: in Bahrain, prisons are filled with those who dare voice their opinions.
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