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Authors and translators say PEN America has ‘had no criticism of American complicity in the bombardment of Gaza’, in stark contrast to other national centres of the organisation Thirty-one authors and translators have withdrawn their work from consideration for or declined PEN America’s 2024 literary awards over the organisation’s “failure to protect” Palestinian writers in Gaza.Nine out of 10 longlistees for the PEN/Jean Stein...

Despite his lack of faith, the author believes ‘something happened that was not supposed to happen’ on the day he was attackedSalman Rushdie has revealed an abiding sense that his survival after a brutal knife attack two years ago was a miracle, in spite of his lack of spiritual faith. “I do feel that something happened that was not supposed to happen and I...

Shah Muhammad Rais was devastated when Taliban destroyed his shop, but now he is sending books to Afghanistan via the internetShah Muhammad Rais first opened his bookshop in the Afghan capital in 1974. By 2003, when his story was made famous by the bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul, the business had collected about 100,000 books, in different languages, about literature, history and politics....

The author of Giles Goat-Boy and The Sot-Weed Factor was part of a wave of writers in the 1960s who challenged standards of language and plotJohn Barth, the playfully erudite author whose darkly comic and complicated novels revolved around the art of literature and launched countless debates over the art of fiction, has died aged 93.Johns Hopkins University, where Barth was an emeritus professor...

More than half of the borrowed words relate to cooking, while Kintsugi, the increasingly popular art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer is also includedKatsu, donburi and onigiri are among 23 Japanese words added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its latest update.More than half of the borrowed words relate to food or cooking. Santoku, a knife with a short, flat blade that...

Former president sells Trump-endorsed Bible in concert with Lee Greenwood, country singer whose music is played at his ralliesPatriotic, prayerful and rightwing Americans are being offered the chance to purchase – for a mere $59.99 – a Bible endorsed by Donald Trump, in the latest example of the former US president touting wares to the American public.In a post to his Truth Social platform...

Imogen Wade’s The Time I Was Mugged in New York City impresses judges for ‘lyricism in the account of an abduction’• Scroll down to read the winning poemA poem inspired by the author’s experience of being mugged has won the first prize of £5,000 in the National Poetry Competition.The Time I Was Mugged in New York City by Imogen Wade tells the story of...

Fiona Shaw, Cush Jumbo, Imelda Staunton and Miriam Margolyes to enact parts of novel’s concluding monologue in The Molly FilmsIt is arguably the most staggering piece of writing in James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, stretching over 60 pages and containing only two full stops.This year, Molly Bloom and her monologue will take centre stage at a celebration of Bloomsday on 16 June – the day...

Early editions of the book of quotations will be sold at an auction of Cultural Revolution artefactsThe Little Red Book, a talisman of 20th-century Maoism, may have fallen out of favour in China after the Cultural Revolution, but its popularity with collectors shows no sign of abating.The book, officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, was given its popular name due to the bright...

The Internationalists details how the president was determined to leave a country in which 2,324 US troops were killed since 2001Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.“No one offered to resign” over...

Writers including Roxane Gay have called on the organisation to ‘wake up from its silent, tepid, self-congratulatory middle of the road and take a stand’An open letter from writers and literary professionals to PEN America calling on the organisation to take a stronger stance on the Israel-Gaza war has reached more than 500 signatories, including writers Roxane Gay, Maaza Mengiste and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.The...

Announcing her untitled book, set to be published in 2025, Emma Heming Willis recalls having ‘close to no resources or support’ after her husband’s diagnosisBruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming Willis is set to publish a book about her experience as a caregiver to her husband after he was disagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.The untitled book, which will be published in 2025 by Maria Shriver’s publishing...

The Kiowa tribe member’s debut House Made of Dawn is credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literatureN Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer prize-winning storyteller, poet, educator and folklorist whose debut novel House Made of Dawn is widely credited as the starting point for contemporary Native American literature, has died. He was 89.Momaday died Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico,...

Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen, authors of The Truce, quote former staffers to vice-president in scathing assessmentConsidering Kamala Harris’s fitness to take over from Joe Biden should the need arise, a top aide to the former California senator’s 2020 campaign said: “This person should not be president of the United States.”The withering assessment, given after Harris was picked for vice-president in 2020, is...

Books by bestselling author Grigori Chkhartishvili, who writes under pen name Boris Akunin, removed from shelvesRussia-Ukraine war – latest news updatesRussia’s justice ministry late on Friday designated one of the country’s most popular fiction writers a foreign agent because of his opposition to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.The historical detective stories of Boris Akunin, the pen name of Georgian-born Grigori Chkhartishvili, used to be bestsellers...

Conflict has changed Ukrainian poetry and boosted interest at home and abroad, but several poets have died or disappearedA year ago, the poet Borys Humenyuk sent a final message. For 24 hours, he and two fellow Ukrainian soldiers had been under relentless Russian fire. Shells rained down on their trench outside the eastern city of Bakhmut. “We’re running out of ammo. Down to the...