John Baker’s Blog

A panel at the PEN World Voices session came up with the following titles:
Antonio Muñoz Molina: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Catherine Millet: The Lily of the Valley by Honoré de Balzac
Yousef al-Mohaimeed: first the Arabian Nights, then poetry (including haikus), and then, of all things Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek
Olivier Rolin: Under the Volcano by [...]

The fourth annual PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature will take place 29th April to 4th May 2008. This year’s theme of Public Lives/Private Lives could hardly be more timely. How do we draw a line between our private and public selves? When must we tell private stories for the public [...]

1. Why do you blog?
I started because, for a time, I was caught fast at home and it brought me the outside world. Now I can’t seem to stop. Though sometimes tiresome, the exercise of regular writing brings discipline and creative pleasure. It is admittedly a quest for audience approval and its thread of journalism [...]

1. Why do you blog?
I need a readily available outlet to express/expose my writing. Like my previous and current obsessions/passions (art/music) I have to write, I am driven to write – If I don’t then I am stifled, a depressed malcontent, well, more than I usually am anyway, and like music this is not something [...]