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.
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreOn the sublimation of authority
Hakan Günday unpacks the notion of authority and censorship, and considers its effects on civilians
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreTaking 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
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreA Little Honey
This week’s PEN Atlas features a moving piece of writing by Jáchym Topol about a man and his ailing mother
Read MoreWhat'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?
Read MoreWhat’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?
Read MoreWhat 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.
Read MoreNew 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
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreWhat 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
Read MorePEN Atlas Q&A – Gerbrand Bakker, author of The Detour
PEN Atlas Editor, Tasja Dorkofikis talks to Gerbrand Bakker about his novel, The Detour, Wales, and translating Emily Dickinson
Read MorePEN Atlas Q&A – Gerbrand Bakker, author of The Detour
PEN Atlas Editor, Tasja Dorkofikis talks to Gerbrand Bakker about his novel, The Detour, Wales, and translating Emily Dickinson
Read MoreLiterature rises in the East
Ayfer Tunç writes for PEN Atlas ab0ut the importance of looking past the clichés so that Turkish literature is seen in the context of World Literature. This is the first in a series of reports from Turkey, a focus both for London Book Fair, and for English PEN.
Read MoreNo offence meant
Award-winning translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones experiences extreme public reactions to the latest crime novel she has translated on a recent trip to Poland…
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