The Khaleej Times reported today on the announcement this week of the participants in the second annual Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature (EAIFL), to be held next March in Dubai.

Among the international participants are Martin Amis, Mark Billingham, Tim Butcher, Christopher Cleave, Isabel Fonseca, James Meek, and Alexander McCall Smith.

Arabic participants include Leila Abouleila, Khaled Mattawa, Khaled Mattawa, who translated Seven Poems from Saadi Youssef, Adhaf Souief, Raja Shehadeh, who read at this year’s PEN World Voices, Samuel Shimon, Bahaa Taher and Yossef Ziedan.

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African culture website Bella Naija has an excerpt annotated by Bookaholic blogger Temitayo Olofinlua of an interview with Binyajavanga Wanaina, Kenyan founding editor of Kwani, published last week on Pambazuka News: African Writers’ Corner.

Wanaina cited six of his favorite writers, including Kojo Laing, Saul Bellow, Ahmadou Kourouma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chinua Achebe, and Witold Gombrowicz: “…love his absurd, dense books, with so many tiny human and natural transactions….”

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And in case you missed it:

Last week the Guardian ran a story by Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, titled “Something Is Burning Outside” and translated by Ottilie Mulzet. The story is part of the Stories from a new Europe series, which explores the upheavals of 1989, and is set in a artists’ retreat on “a dead lake formed inside a crater.”