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PEN Transmissions

PEN Transmissions

English PEN's magazine for international writing

  • ABOUT
  • ESSAYS
  • INTERVIEWS
  • LONG READS
  • SERIES
    • x International Booker Prize
    • Pasifika Voices
    • x British Museum x Edmund de Waal
    • Digital Literary Salon [LONDON BOOK FAIR]
    • x Granta magazine
  • EDITORIALS
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All articles filed in interview

past futuresJuly 31, 2019August 27, 2019

Living History: a Conversation with Kapka Kassabova

‘Often, we the natives of the Balkans or the Middle East, with our extraordinarily polyphonic histories and hurts, are narrated by others – usually others from the dominant colonising cultures.’

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women togetherJune 26, 2019July 31, 2019

Channeling the rage: an interview with Meena Kandasamy

‘I think that the creation of an equal, just society is impossible under capitalism, which is why we need to learn from the mistakes of the past and imagine other ways of living. I think understanding caste, class, race inequalities is fundamental to any understanding of women’s struggle.’

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blind faithMay 30, 2019July 30, 2019

Not permanent, but real: a conversation with Selva Almada

‘Charismatic and powerful men, at least in our societies, see their role as looking after their own interests rather than serving others. That’s how it is, and more and more so as neoliberalism takes hold of our governments.’ 

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revolutionApril 15, 2019July 30, 2019

Blood on its hands: a conversation with Robert Menasse

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m an artist one day and an activist the next. When I get politically involved, I do so as an artist. That is important to me.

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revolutionApril 15, 2019July 30, 2019

No time for arrogance: a conversation with Ece Temelkuran

It has become the motto of our age to say, ‘Oh I hate politics’ – without realising that that is the most political statement you can come up with.

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found familyMarch 4, 2019July 30, 2019

Normality is fiction: a conversation with Samanta Schweblin

I think fiction starts with something really unusual. We keep trying to be normal, day after day, but normality is a fiction. It is a space between you and me, but there is nobody who occupies that space.

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hiddenNovember 2, 2018July 30, 2019

Silence as communication: a conversation with Elias Khoury

‘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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hiddenNovember 2, 2018July 30, 2019

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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nature and its absenceAugust 23, 2018July 30, 2019

Nature bubbling out: a conversation with Mahvash Sabet

I never consciously make a decision about what to say in a poem: the poem itself says itself. So the poem happens. It doesn’t happen because I have decided that it should happen. It wasn’t a conscious decision to write about nature. The nature just bubbled out.

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writing the pastJune 19, 2018

The past is a dimension of the present: a conversation with Javier Cercas

‘I’m not interested in history itself. I’m interested in the past that has not passed.’

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writing the pastJune 19, 2018July 30, 2019

The past and the present side by side: a conversation with Peter Kimani

I am contesting the validity of history as we know it, because what is recorded is never told from the perspective of the victim, it is always the victor.

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hope after crisisMay 17, 2018January 22, 2020

On the move: a conversation with Olga Tokarczuk

The concept of a ‘nation’ doesn’t have the power to describe the contemporary identity of people living in the world. We should look for other ideas to describe us as a collective, as a group, as a society.

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women 2018May 17, 2018

Unpredictable transgression: a conversation with Ariana Harwicz

To write thinking of a novel’s reception and anticipating that it will be of interest is an idea of hell, a betrayal.

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archiveJune 29, 2017

A conversation with Vigdis Hjorth

We have to work on two fronts. We have to do something about the structures, and we also have to help the individual.

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archiveMay 11, 2017

A conversation with Dorthe Nors

You become an estranged human being, which leads to a certain kind of solitude and loneliness.

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archiveMarch 2, 2017

A conversation with Mohsin Hamid

‘Even if you’re 75 years old and haven’t left the city you’ve grown up in, you have migrated through time. To me, it feels like the theme of being human is being a migrant.’

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