Just who is the Arab world listening to? Not only radical sheikhs and militant politicians. The man whose voice has captivated the Arab public is a Cairo dentist by day and a novelist by dawn. Alaa Al Aswany’s novel The Yacoubian Building is a phenomenon—the best-selling novel in the Middle […]
Seamus Heaney has such a strong following that he’s been nicknamed Famous Seamus, and his lectures are so popular that the crowds lining up to hear him are dubbed “Heaneyboppers”. He’s Ireland’s first Nobel Prize winning poet since Yeats. Heany is one of my very favourite poets. I was looking […]
“Out of India”: three writers – Amitav Ghosh, Bharati Mukherjee and K. Satchidanandan — reflect on the country of their childhood and its dynamic changes today. Eleanor Wachtel spoke with them, onstage, at this year’s Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Listen to Eleanor Wachtel’s panel interview, Out of […]