Category: Dispatches
January, 2010
Welcome to the New Words without Borders
On behalf of the staff of Words without Borders, I’d like to welcome you to our new site. As you can see, the changes are fairly dramatic. Not only does it look amazing, but the navigation is far more intuitive, and content from both the current issue and from our archives is much more at the forefront.…...
December, 2009
Dispatches: Fault Lines by Meena Alexander
I covered a few events at this year's PEN World Voices festival, and when I arrived at a storytelling event sponsored by The Moth I was lucky enough to be seated next to the poet and author Meena Alexander. She was among those blogging about the event for PEN itself. We talked about an extensive…...
Dispatches: Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti
I wrote about Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti for my book A Basket of Leaves. I've been surprised to see that that review has become one of the most visited pages on my site. The novel, translated from French by Peter Green and published by Heinemann in 1957, is not exactly well-known. But I can understand…...
November, 2009
Dispatches: Shadows of Your Black Memory
Shadows of Your Black Memory is a rarity -- a novel from the tiny West African nation of Equatorial Guinea. Of Africa’s three Guineas -- Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea -- Equatorial Guinea is the smallest at 28,000 square kilometers, about the size of Massachusetts. It is also the…...
Dispatches: Breyten Breytenbach
The South African poet Breyten Breytenbach has been a regular participant in PEN World Voices events, but although I had seen him on panels I had never had the chance to hear him read and discuss his work on his own. Earlier this month Idlewild Books invited Breytenbach to read and discuss his work,…...
Dispatches: Under the Volcano
November 2, the Day of the Dead in Mexico, marked the 70th anniversary of the day on which Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece Under the Volcano begins. In honor of that anniversary I began rereading it, but first I reread the letter that Lowry wrote to Jonathan Cape, his publisher, after hearing that…...
South Africa: A Traveler’s Literary Companion
Based in Berkeley, California, Whereabouts Press publishes an intriguing series of Traveler's Literary Companions. "Unlike guidebooks written by professional travel writers," they explain, "our books feature stories written by literary writers -- all of whom who have lived in the places they write…...
October, 2009
Dispatches: African Memoirs
Dear reader: I need your help. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of African memoirs: books like Echoes of an Autobiography by Naguib Mahfouz, An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar by Emily Ruete, and Return to Childhood by Leila Abouzeid.…...
September, 2009
Dispatches: An African in Greenland
With its bookshelves organized by country, New York’s Idlewild Books is a great resource for anyone who wants to delve into a particular corner of the world. For instance, fiction from the Cape Verde islands is very tough to find, and when I was there the other day I was surprised and impressed…...
January, 2009
From the Symposium: Studying the Arab World in Western Universities
Last month I attended the symposium "The Study of the Arab World in Western Universities," sponsored by ALESCO, the Arab League Educational and Scientific Organization, and hosted by the Arabic department of the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, aka SOAS. The four-day…...
Page 5 of 5 pages ‹ First < 3 4 5
- top -
