Articles tagged "Exile"
From the Archives: Exiles
This month’s North Korean defectors join the numerous WWB contributors writing in exile. Most of April's Iraqi writers, many of November's banned Chinese writers, virtually all of our July…...
Is This How Women Grow Up?
It is all a matter of décor Change your bed change your body What’s the use since it is still Me betraying myself Indolent and scattered And my shadow undresses In the arms of girls, all alike,…...
The Destiny of a Leaf
A man is not a bird that he might make his home on any shore he flies to. A man has the destiny of a leaf. A leaf, when separated from the heights of its branch, is trampled underfoot by passersby in the…...
from “Ru”
I came into the world early in the Year of the Monkey, during the Tet Offensive, when long strings of fireworks hanging from the houses exploded in polyphony with the sound of machine guns. Saigon was…...
Imaginary Return
1984 It was night. The ninth night. The most silent, the most oppressive. Under the whiteness of snow, in the darkness of time, the edges of the earth were lost. It was night. The ninth night. The smuggler…...
An Athenian Story from…the Alexandra Birth Clinic
This is the fifth and final installment in a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience…...
An Athenian Story…from Afghanistan
This is the fourth installment in a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants…...
An Athenian Story…from Vietnam
This is the third installment of a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants…...
An Athenian Story…from Iran
This is the second installment of a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants…...
On Kaspar Hauser
A piece in this month's issue of WWB, by the Greek writer Dimitris Chatzis, compared the plight of the immigrant to the legend of Kaspar Hauser. For those who haven't heard of Kaspar, a brief intro: in…...
An Athenian Story…from Nigeria
As part of our Greek offerings this month, we're featuring a number of pieces written by Gazmand Kapllani, an extract from whose Short Border Handbook is available on WWB. The pieces all deal with the…...
An Exchange on Nation and Exile
"Perhaps I am one of the last who must live out to the end the destiny of the Jewish spirit in Europe." Why "must"? Writing from Paris in August 1948 to relatives in the new state of Israel, Paul Celan,…...
Sweating and Swearing in “Clash of Civilizations”
In the opening chapter of Amara Lakhous's gritty mosaic, Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, Parviz Mansoor interrupts his rambling monologue to comment on the way language…...
Scheherazade, C’est Moi? An Interview with Amara Lakhous
Algeria was imploding into civil war in 1993 when Amara Lakhous, born in 1970 in Algiers, wrote his first novel. But no bombs go off in The Bedbugs and the Pirate, the inner monologue of a Gogolian forty-…...
Of Words and Borders
As a writer, I have come to know that writers have the misfortune of being invited to speak on things about which they know absolutely nothing. What do I know about this magic string of words: "Hospitality…...
The Literature of the Future
A couple of weeks ago on a cold night I walked to the Mercantile Library—for the first time in all these years that I have been living in Manhattan I have to admit—to listen to a discussion about…...
“Bring to me all that’s of no use to others:”
Bring to me all that's of no use to others: My fire must burn it all! I lure life, and I lure death As weightless gifts to my fire. Fire loves light-weighted things: Last year's brushwood, wreathes,…...
Boarding Home
Introduction: Willie in Miami, Rey in Nueva York by Norberto Fuentes Three of us made up that sad brotherhood at the end of the Sixties in Cuba: Guillermo Rosales, Reinaldo Arenas, and their faithful servant.…...
Is This Home?
In the days prior to my return I had decided to assume a cool demeanor and contemplate my country as a tourist might, and not as a rapturous and homesick returnee. I wanted to hold the moment in my hands,…...
Rosa
Family tradition relates that in the year of grace 1667, my grandfather, the Count de la Savoia eloped with a beautiful nun from the monastery of Domus Ciliota. The Corpa della Nobilita Venezia revoked…...
from Canary
Characters: Siggi Grünebaum, an old diamond cutter Benny Schorsch, his partner Violetta Grünebaum-Moser, Siggi's daughter Roland Moser, her husband Elfie Schneider, a young woman The play…...
Wooden Birds
The door of the room was opened suddenly and a redhead burst in. Dijana's voice, breathless and impatient, was heard. "Come on now, Felicita! Shall we be waiting for you all day? Get that big arse…...
Another Sky
An asphalt sky: your memory Your earth is only a body Time is a poem approaching Time is a poem withering Time is a poem dying & time is a wailing wall for poems and dreams Such is exile Your bottlenecked…...
The Lanterns of Seville
To Julienne Peters of Brussels, who was moved to tears by the beauty of the Alcazar in the Seville of the Arabs, I dedicate these lanterns. "Would you look down on a cousin of yours if he addressed you…...
Family Picture in Havana
Mom and I are alone once again the same as it was at the end of the forties. Alone, in a house that's not our own, we tell each other last night's dreams (in hers two old people are always crying;…...
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