Latest news with #EnglishPEN
Wales Online
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Sir Salman Rushdie has found 'closure' after knife attack
Sir Salman Rushdie has found 'closure' after knife attack The 77-year-old author was left critically injured after he was stabbed repeatedly onstage just moments before he was due to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022 (Image: © 2025 PA Media, All Rights Reserved ) Sir Salman Rushdie is "over" the knife attack which almost killed him because he's found "closure". The 77-year-old author was left critically injured after he was stabbed repeatedly onstage just moments before he was due to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022 and he suffered life-changing injuries including the loss of an eye - but Rushdie is adamant he just wants to move on with his life and stop talking about the horrifying incident. During an appearance at the Hay Festival in Wales over the weekend, Rushdie told the audience: "[I am feeling] excellent ... this is as good as it gets ... "[There are] bits of me that I'm annoyed about, not having a right eye is annoying ... but on the whole I've been fortunate and I'm better than maybe I would have expected." Hadi Matar, 27, is serving 25 years behind bars after being convicted of attempted murder and assault following a trial which concluded in February, while Rushdie wrote about his experiences in his book 'Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder' - and he's adamant he wants put the incident behind him now. He said: "I'm glad that trial is over and done with. And that he got the maximum sentence. The closure was more finishing writing about it ... Article continues below "Ever since the attack, really, the only thing anybody's wanted to talk to me about is the attack. And I'm over it. It will be nice to have stories to talk about. "When I wanted to be a writer, it never occurred to me that I would write about myself. That seemed like the most uninteresting thing of all. I wanted to make stuff up." The novelist was airlifted to hospital after the attack and underwent eight hours of surgery. He lost an eye and suffered multiple stab wounds to areas of his face, neck, chest and hand, remaining under the care of doctors for 18 days before starting three weeks of rehabilitation treatment. Rushdie previously revealed he leaned on a therapist to help him write about the near-fatal stabbing - explaining it was the first book he's ever needed help writing. Speaking at a question-and-answer session at an English PEN event at the Southbank Centre in London, Rushdie explained: "[It is the] only book I've ever written with the help of a therapist. Article continues below "It gave me back control of the narrative. Instead of being a man lying on the stage with a pool of blood, I'm a man writing a book about a man live on stage with a pool of blood. That felt good." However, he still found it tough to describe the incident that almost claimed his life. He said: "'The first chapter] in which I have to describe in some detail the exact nature of the attack. It was very hard to do."
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Must Laila Soueif die from her hunger strike in London before her son Alaa Abd el-Fattah is released?
Laila Soueif is one of the most determined people I know, and for that reason, she is in grave danger. The grandmother, 69, is lying in a hospital bed in central London, perilously close to death after 245 days on hunger strike. She could still survive, but it will depend on the UK government taking strong action. Soueif stopped eating to try to save her son, the imprisoned British-Egyptian national Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and winner of the 2024 English PEN writer of courage award. He has spent more than a decade in an Egyptian jail cell because of his writings on democracy. Soueif wants more than anything else to reunite him with his own son, 13, who lives in Brighton and has barely been able to spend time with his father. Soueif's hunger strike has been fuelled by her frustration with both her governments: the Egyptian government that heartlessly refused to release Abd el-Fattah at the end of his most recent five-year sentence, imposed because he shared a Facebook post about the torture of a prisoner; and the British government, which has not been able even to visit Abd el-Fattah and has been regrettably timid in pushing for its citizen's freedom. This is the second time this year that Soueif's hunger strike has led to her being admitted to hospital, but the danger to her life is far greater this time after so long without food. Her blood-sugar levels are shockingly low and her family spend each day hoping she can make it through the next night. Her doctors say it is a miracle that she is still alive. The pressure on Egypt to release Abd el-Fattah has been growing. The UN working group on arbitrary detention last week issued a landmark opinion determining that he is unlawfully detained and that under international law Egyptian authorities must release him immediately. Given the overwhelming and urgent threats to Soueif's life, and Egypt's repeated insults to the British government and international law, the UK must now ramp up the pressure on Egypt to release Abd el-Fattah. Keir Starmer has rightly raised his case with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, but we know this Egyptian government will not respond to words alone: the last three prime ministers also tried discussing the case without success. I have been working on Abd el-Fattah's case as part of a new all-party parliamentary group campaigning for British nationals who are arbitrarily detained, and I find the lack of respect shown by Egypt for the UK's rights in relation to a British citizen alarming. With my colleagues, I recently submitted evidence to the foreign affairs committee inquiry noting that the UK has not taken any action, including sanctions, against any Egyptian authorities responsible for Abd el-Fattah's continued detention beyond the end of his five-year sentence. That position should be urgently reviewed. This week I joined the former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson, the former Foreign Office minister Peter Hain and the campaigner Richard Ratcliffe in calling on the government to change its travel advice to 'caution against travel to Egypt'. In light of what we have learned from Abd el-Fattah's case, the British government must make clear that a UK citizen who falls foul of the police state in Egypt cannot expect fair process or normal support from the British government. Hundreds of thousands of UK citizens travel to Egypt each year, making a major contribution to the country's economy, and the truth is we can't guarantee their rights. The Egyptian government will undoubtedly take notice if its failure to abide by the rule of law starts affecting hotel bookings for the winter season. Alongside this, the UK should be holding off any new trade and investment cooperation with Egypt until Abd el-Fattah is released. The British government should not be signing trade deals with countries that are arbitrarily detaining our citizens. Any plans for the conference announced by the Egyptian government last year to 'pump British investments' should be shelved immediately and there should be no discussion of UK support for financial packages to Egypt. Finally, the British government should look to take this matter to the international court of justice. The Egyptian government's continued refusal of consular access to Abd el-Fattah amounts to a clear breach of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and Britain should seek to claim its rights at the world court. France has recently taken this step in relation to two of its nationals held in Iran. Soueif's bravery and fortitude is astonishing but if her son's case is not solved urgently, the consequences for her and her family are too terrible to contemplate. Our government has a duty to use every tool available to secure his release. The time for relying solely on polite diplomacy is long past: the prime minister must demonstrate his strength and resolve in this case. Helena Kennedy KC is a Labour peer and was chair of the Power inquiry into the reform of democracy
Perth Now
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Sir Salman Rushdie has found 'closure' after knife attack
Sir Salman Rushdie is "over" the knife attack which almost killed him because he's found "closure". The 77-year-old author was left critically injured after he was stabbed repeatedly onstage just moments before he was due to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022 and he suffered life-changing injuries including the loss of an eye - but Rushdie is adamant he just wants to move on with his life and stop talking about the horrifying incident. During an appearance at the Hay Festival in Wales over the weekend, Rushdie told the audience: "[I am feeling] excellent … this is as good as it gets ... "[There are] bits of me that I'm annoyed about, not having a right eye is annoying … but on the whole I've been fortunate and I'm better than maybe I would have expected." Hadi Matar, 27, is serving 25 years behind bars after being convicted of attempted murder and assault following a trial which concluded in February, while Rushdie wrote about his experiences in his book 'Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder' - and he's adamant he wants put the incident behind him now. He said: "I'm glad that trial is over and done with. And that he got the maximum sentence. The closure was more finishing writing about it ... "Ever since the attack, really, the only thing anybody's wanted to talk to me about is the attack. And I'm over it. It will be nice to have stories to talk about. "When I wanted to be a writer, it never occurred to me that I would write about myself. That seemed like the most uninteresting thing of all. I wanted to make stuff up." The novelist was airlifted to hospital after the attack and underwent eight hours of surgery. He lost an eye and suffered multiple stab wounds to areas of his face, neck, chest and hand, remaining under the care of doctors for 18 days before starting three weeks of rehabilitation treatment. Rushdie previously revealed he leaned on a therapist to help him write about the near-fatal stabbing - explaining it was the first book he's ever needed help writing. Speaking at a question-and-answer session at an English PEN event at the Southbank Centre in London, Rushdie explained: "[It is the] only book I've ever written with the help of a therapist. "It gave me back control of the narrative. Instead of being a man lying on the stage with a pool of blood, I'm a man writing a book about a man live on stage with a pool of blood. That felt good." However, he still found it tough to describe the incident that almost claimed his life. He said: "'The first chapter] in which I have to describe in some detail the exact nature of the attack. It was very hard to do."
Hindustan Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
The world of Banu Mushtaq, Kannadiga life in the margins
It is indeed a high moment for Kannada and Karnataka: Kannada literature finds itself on the global literary map, thanks to the labour of two women. Banu Mushtaq, a senior Kannada writer, has been awarded the 2025 International Booker Prize for Heart Lamp (Hridaya Deepa), her anthology of 12 short stories, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. Women's writing in Kannada has not received the recognition it deserves. Even most of the notable awards at the national level, the Jnanpith for instance, have been conferred on men. In this context, the Booker is indeed a historic moment for women's writing in Kannada which can boast of great talent from Triveni and MK Indira of yesteryears to Pratibha Nandakumar, Vaidehi, and Du Saraswathi, actively writing today. And there is more, where it comes from. Much more! Banu Mushtaq hails from Hassan, the south-western town in the plains of Karnataka, while Deepa lives in Madikeri, a town in the Western Ghat ranges. The ordinary lives of common people in her small town constitute Banu's fictional universe. The award, thus, signals the triumph of the small town. A practising advocate, and social activist, Banu is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. Several important honours, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy award and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe award have come seeking her. Her short story Black Cobras, which depicts the plight of Hasina, an abandoned wife, was made into an award-winning film by Girish Kasaravalli, the eminent film director, in 2004. Hasina and Other Stories, another collection of her short stories, also translated by Deepa Bhasthi, had won the English PEN translation award in 2024. Banu began her career during the Bandaya or the protest movement of the heady 1970s and '80s. The movement culminated in the awakening of a new social consciousness, which led to the effervescence of new writing in Kannada. The unheard voices of marginalised groups were heard for the first time, heralding a non-Brahmin era in Kannada literary culture. Sara Aboobacker, Fakir Mohammad Katpadi, Boluvar Kunhi, and Banu Mushtaq started chronicling the stories of their community for the first time. Standing on the firm ground of lived experience and observed life, Banu deployed writing as a powerful tool of social dissent. To put it in her own words: 'My stories are about women — how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates. The daily incidents reported in the media and the personal experiences I have endured have been my inspiration. The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study.' The first story in Heart Lamp, Stone Slab for Shaista Mahal to the last one in the collection, Be A Woman Once, Oh Lord! bear testimony to the fact that her writing is a searing indictment of our social system. Banu's commitment to progressive politics can be traced back to the Bandaya movement, which proclaimed, 'May poetry be a sword, a soulmate who feels for the pain of the people.' It couldn't have been easy for Banu as a Muslim speaking Dakhani Urdu, and as a woman writer writing in Kannada, to critique the patriarchal practices of an already beleaguered community. Banu candidly describes her predicament as a Muslim woman writer writing in a second language for a majoritarian reading community. She writes in the preface to her first collection (1990), 'I gradually became aware that even when I am writing in Kannada, I can only write about the Muslim world, its people, their joys and sorrows, their interests and angularities. Almost immediately, I also realised that the Muslim community will surely resist such revealing narratives. Even as I was coming to terms with this resistance from inside the community, I could equally clearly see how the larger community outside was as resistant to any critique coming from me.' It is remarkable that Banu has successfully negotiated this tightrope walk by simultaneously being a critical insider in the Muslim community, and a friendly outsider in the larger, not-so-friendly majority community. Her stories help us connect with the Muslim community in a small town like Hassan, which is invariably othered, reminding us of our common humanity. Deepa Bhashti's curation of stories showcases Banu's writing at its best. Deepa's translation has ably captured the rhythms and movements of Banu's lifeworld to lend a powerful voice to her various characters in English. Her interesting afterword provides a detailed account of the rationale behind her translation practice which has retained several Kannada and Urdu words while eschewing footnotes and italics altogether. Today, as new literates from the village, the small town, the city, and the metropolis have greater access to knowledge and technology, tremendous difference and diversity marks Kannada writing, bringing in lives and experiences that had not entered the hallowed space of the 'literary'. The Booker for Banu's stories has the potential to open the door to the diverse lifeworlds of the Kannada people through translation. Translations have always built bridges across communities. Which communities do the English translations of our regional literatures connect? Surely, Deepa's translation has brought home the Muslim world of Hassan to an international readership. Max Porter, chair of the International Booker Prize 2025, said: 'Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation.' But, as important, or perhaps more, is the bridge that it can build across the many linguistic worlds within India through our common, if alien, inheritance of English. Kannada literature can, as if by a sleight of hand, become Indian literature through English translations. There is yet another, perhaps the most important constituency that can be served through English translations. Increasingly, the educated class, which is the likely consumer of books, is growing monolingual in its orientation. While this class is comfortable using the local language or English for functional purposes, it largely reads in just one language: either Kannada or English, in the case of Karnataka. That the sales figures for English translations of regional texts are the highest in that very region bears out this claim. The English translations of regional literary texts can connect the more educated populace with the people around them. We are well-served by such translation activism. Most of the English translators of Kannada literature today are engaged in developing a pared down style and forging an informal and intimate English to express the varied voices, rhythms and styles of the emergent Kannada sensibilities of a new generation in a new age, helping the 'bullock carts to reach the global stage'! (Banu's words). International recognition — be it the 2018 DSC award for Tejaswini Niranjana's translations of Jayant Kaikini's stories or now the Booker for Deepa in 2025 — is bound to encourage translators and publishers to boldly experiment with 'a plurality of Englishes', explore new and creative ways of translating to bring alive novel life-worlds unknown to the mainstream culture, making for greater empathy for the worlds in the margins. Translation can, thus, be a potent bridge which can connect our polarised worlds. Vanamala Viswanatha is currently visiting professor, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. She has translated the works of major Kannada writers including U R Ananthamurthy, P Lankesh, Poornachandra Tejaswi, Vaidehi, and Sara Aboobakkar into English. Her latest work is a translation of Kuvempu's celebrated novel, Malegalalli Madumagalu (Bride in the Hills). The views expressed are personal
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Funding fights, memoirs by Boris Becker and Stallone, plus the queen of romantasy: this year's London book fair
Contentious classics, book-to-screen adaptations and the future of festival funding were some of the hottest topics at this week's London book fair, which saw around 30,000 agents, authors, translators, publishers and other industry professionals meet in Olympia, London, across three days to hammer out rights deals and discuss the future of publishing. Here is our roundup of some of the takeaways from this year's fair, and a taste of the books we can expect to see in shops in the near future. In case you missed last summer's festival funding fiasco: fund manager Baillie Gifford came under fire for its investments in fossil fuels and companies linked to Israel, which resulted in partnerships between the firm and nine literary festivals it sponsored being cut. At this week's fair, English PEN made the bold but much-needed move to get the stakeholders in the same room at the same time. A representative of the campaign group Fossil Free Books, Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, said that its members had seen an opportunity to make a difference and protest injustices that many of them had written about. However, Fiona Razvi, the director of Wimbledon BookFest – which had previously been sponsored by Baillie Gifford – said that 'attacking an investment company which passed our scrutiny, which we were very happy with – they were a force for good, as far as I can see, in our industry – I'm not so sure that was the right way', to loud applause. It feels like an exciting time for book-to-screen adaptations, with The Thursday Murder Club and Guillermo del Toro's version of Frankenstein among many other much-anticipated films in the works. Indeed, films based on books typically do significantly better at the box office than those with original screenplays. The challenge of turning novels into films and series went under the microscope at this year's fair, with authors and producers each pulling back the curtain on the obstacle-ridden process. Lucy Clarke, whose book The Castaways was turned into a hit series for Paramount+, said that she never writes specifically for screen, but 'obviously there's that lovely glittery hope that maybe it'll get picked up'. Love was in the air at the fair, with a spate of new acquisitions in the romance and romance-adjacent space: Tess Sharpe's romance-action thriller No Body No Crime; a three-book series by BookTok star Tierney Page; Patrick Ness's novel Meridian; and Remain, a romantic thriller from Nicholas Sparks and M Night Shyamalan. Plus, queen of romantasy Rebecca Yarros will have her blockbuster Empyrean books, beginning with Fourth Wing, adapted into a six-part graphic novel series. 'There is something so special about seeing your words come to life through art,' she said. What should publishers do with classic books containing offensive language or ideas? They might include footnotes or an introduction by a contemporary author to add context. Or they might decide the text isn't worth publishing any more. Children are handed classics and told 'this is something that you must revere, this is something you must value', said Aimée Felone, managing director of children's publisher Knights Of. Yet, a 'classic' is a 'socially constructed' thing, said Maria Bedford, editorial director at Scribe. Whether or not to continue publishing problematic work by historically admired authors is a nuanced, ever-changing conversation that publishers are still working out how to have, the fair's panel made clear. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Developing the next generation of readers was a key focus of talks at the fair. Authors Kit de Waal and Clare Mackintosh discussed the literacy 'crisis', while Waterstones CEO James Daunt and Hachette CEO David Shelley discussed ways the industry could help tackle the decline in children reading for pleasure. However, it wasn't all negative: Daunt reported that 'kids are in the stores everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic'. Starry memoirs were served up, with deals inked for Sylvester Stallone's The Steps, to be published in October this year, and Boris Becker's Inside: Winning, Losing, Starting Again, about life during and after his prison sentence for hiding £2.5m in assets and loans.
