Aminatta Forna: Intimate acts of betrayal
Aminatta Forna tells Maya Jaggi that Africa scares the West, but that there’s as much reason to be scared in Croatia as in Sierra Leone.
Musings of a letters’ man
Widely acknowledged as the greatest living Arab poet, the Syrian-born Adonis is a fiercely independent thinker.
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Minding the gap — or not
Barbara Kingsolver’s long-awaited new novel recalls a dangerous era for artists, writes Maya Jaggi.
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Everyman’s an alien
Maya Jaggi detects echoes of 9/11 in a story about Chinese totalitarianism.
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Cairo calling
Alaa Al Aswany, author of <i>The Yacoubian Building</i>, has a new novel,<i> Chicago</i>. He speaks to Maya Jaggi.
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Arabic writers still fighting for freedom of expression
Maya Jaggi reports from the Cairo book fair on the struggle for freedom of expression.
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When East is West
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has faced criminal charges and even death threats in his native Turkey, yet he refuses to be disillusioned.
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The voice of conscience
When Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka visited the Hay Cartagena festival in Colombia earlier this year, in a walled Spanish colonial town on the Caribbean coast, children in the streets instantly thought they recognised the black man with leonine grey hair. But they couldn’t decide whether he was Kofi Annan or Don King.
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Fela’s rising son
It took years for Femi Kuti to win over fans of his father, the Afrobeat legend Fela, writes Maya Jaggi.
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Casualties of war
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel reflects on the Biafra conflict and the effects it had on all Nigerians, writes Maya Jaggi.
