165 Nonfiction World through the Eyes of Writers entries in Mag: Articles
Necessary or True Happenstances: An Introduction to the Work of Hye Young-Pyun
“O. Cuniculi” is featured in Hye Young-Pyun’s third collection of short stories, Evening Courtship, for which she was awarded the prestigious Dong-in Literature Prize last year. The story…...
About the Young Writer Zheng Xialou
Zheng Xiaolu, editor of a literary magazine, is only twenty-five years old. He was probably twenty-two when he wrote this story. Last year, he and another editor visited me to discuss how I arrange for…...
The World is Moving Around Me
My Nephew I stepped out into the yard with my nephew. The little shacks on the other side of the ravine stood up to the earthquake. The old wall collapsed. We sit on the hood of the car. “I’m…...
No Way Out: Talking to Orly Castel-Bloom, Agur Schiff, and Moshe Ron
Orly Castel-Bloom is getting ready to leave. “I’ll buy an apartment in Montpelier,” she said. “I’ll write policiers. I’ll tell the French about themselves. They love…...
God After Ten O’Clock
The State Security Building: The First Arrest of the Seagull It was maybe three or four o'clock, or maybe sometime in between. Why am I trying to establish an exact time? Curses on the clock that forces…...
The Egyptian Revolution Won’t be Fooled
Historically, popular revolutions are distinguished by moral purity and an adherence to lofty human principles—dignity, freedom, justice, and truth. Weren’t these principles the slogans…...
The View from Within: An Introduction to New Afghan Literature
In a discussion at the House of Culture in Stockholm just over a week ago, the Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi, having summarized the last three decades of Afghan history, concluded laconically that the…...
In Praise of the Margins
It’s not easy to paint a faithful picture of a literature in only a few words. And so, rather than presenting a broad overview of the current Quebec literary scene, I propose to bring to your attention…...
Noor Jehan
I think I first saw Noor Jehan in the film Khandan. They called her Baby in those days, but believe me when I say that she didn't look like a baby. On the contrary, her body had every feature that…...
Diary
Ravenna, October 15, 1963 Finally, after a year’s delay, we are in Ravenna. Just a week left before the first take. The Red Desert will be born after a long and difficult gestation. Those of us here…...
Director’s Notes on “Sway”
I based my first film on a dream. A dream also inspired my second film, made three years later. Through a gloomy thicket in the shadows of a tree bathed in white light, I witnessed a scene still clearly…...
(Bleep), You (Bleeping) (Bleep): Dubbing American Films into Canadian French
The full quote is: “(Bleep), you (bleep) (bleep), I’m ‘onna (bleep) kick your (bleep) (bleep) to (bleep) kingdom come!” This is a typical excerpt from the dialogue of an American…...
Our Man in Madrid: A New Series from Words without Borders
“Madrid es un pueblo,” people here are fond of saying, their tone of paternalism matched only by pride. It’s small, but it’s ours, is more or less the idea. And yet…...
Six Months on Minimum Wage
The hundred people who work at the Tutto Colore clothing factory have hardly noticed me. I could have been an actor, but here I’m invisible, like an extra. I’d like to think that I’m…...
A World of Editing
The recent announcement of Shakespeare and Company’s “Paris Literary Prize,” to be awarded to the best novella by an unpublished writer, set me thinking about my inspiration to go into…...
Landscape with Strikers
At nine a.m. the few people standing around on the subway platform are watching the news on the screens provided by the Barcelona Channel. The trains comply scrupulously with the minimum-service laws.…...
from “The Future of the Arabic Language”
What is the future of the Arabic language? Language is but one manifestation of the power of invention in a nation’s totality or public self. But if this power slumbers, language will stop in its…...
from “Gombrowicz in Argentina”
Rita Gombrowicz’s Gombrowicz in Argentina (Gombrowicz en Argentine, 1984) and Gombrowicz in Europe (Gombrowicz en Europe, 1988) pull together her years of research into Witold Gombrowicz's…...
Urdu Fiction from India: An Introduction
Notwithstanding President Barack Obama’s delightful disclosure that he likes Urdu poetry, few in the West know anything about this language and even less about its otherwise vibrant literature. The…...
