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Prague Writers Festival
The Prague Writers' Festival (PWF) is an annual literary festival in Prague, Czech Republic, taking place every spring since 1991. In 2005 the festival was also held in Vienna. Many of the events are broadcast via the internet. International literary figures to have appeared at the festival include John Banville, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Salman Rushdie, Irvine Welsh, William Styron and Nadine Gordimer. History The festival's origins are in London in the late 1970s, when PWF president Michael March began organising poetry readings at Keats House. As permitted by the Helsinki Accords, writers from the Eastern Bloc were invited to participate. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the readings relocated to Prague, due to its reputation as "a natural host and meeting place for writers". Writers from various countries were invited to Prague as a crossroads between East and West to present their work and their culture to an international audience in the form of discussions and rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prague Writers' Festival Logo Color
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate oceanic climate, with relatively warm summers and chilly winters. Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of central Europe, with a rich history and Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architectures. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV (r. 1346–1378). It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city played major roles in the Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations, the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history as the capital of Czechoslovakia between the World Wars and the post-war Communist era. Prague is home to a number of well-known cultural attractions, many of which survived the violenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plastic People Of The Universe
The Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) is a Czech rock band from Prague. They are considered the foremost representatives of Prague's underground culture (1968–1989), which defied the Czechoslovakia's Communist regime. Members of the band often suffered serious repercussions, including arrests and prosecution, because of their non-conformist ideals. The group continues to perform, despite the death in 2001 of its founder, main composer, and bassist, Milan Hlavsa. To date (2022), they have released nine studio albums and over a dozen live albums. In 2016, the group split in two because of internal differences. The original group is composed of bandleader Josef Janíček, Vratislav Brabenec, Jaroslav Kvasnička, Johnny Judl Jr, and David Babka. The second splinter group, which performs under the name The Plastic People of the Universe/New Generation, is composed of Jiří Kabeš, Josef Karafiát, Jakub Koláček, Wenca Březina, and Vojtěch Starý. History Formation and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arundhati Roy
Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known for her novel ''The God of Small Things'' (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes. Early life Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to Mary Roy, a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala and Rajib Roy, a Bengali Hindu tea plantation manager from Calcutta.Siddhartha Deb,Arundhati Roy, the Not-So-Reluctant Renegade", ''The New York Times'', 5 March 2014. Accessed 5 March 2014. When she was two, her parents divorced and she returned to Kerala with her mother and brother. For some time, the family lived with Roy's maternal grandfather in Ooty, Tamil Nadu. When she was five, the family moved back to Kerala, where her mother started a school. Roy attended school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Conservationist
''The Conservationist'' is a 1974 novel by the South African writer Nadine Gordimer. The book was a joint winner of the Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction. It is described as more complex in design and technique than Gordimer's earlier novels. Plot In South Africa under apartheid, Mehring is a rich white businessman who is not satisfied with his life. His ex-wife has gone to America, his liberal son, Terry (who is probably gay) criticizes his conservative/capitalist ways, and his lovers and colleagues do not actually seem interested in him. On a whim he buys a 400-acre farm outside the city, afterwards trying to explain this purchase to himself as the search for a higher meaning in life. But it is clear that he knows next to nothing about farming, and that black workers run it – Mehring is simply an outsider, an intruder on the daily life of "his" farm. His objective in buying the farm is to make a tax deductible expense. "No farm is beautiful unless it's productive," says Me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Blind Assassin
''The Blind Assassin'' is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century but mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance. The work was awarded the Booker Prize in 2000 and the Hammett Prize in 2001 and also received a number of other nominations. Plot summary The novel's protagonist, Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television. Atwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics". Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age. Oates, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play '' Dream on Monkey Mountain'', a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature,"Derek Walcott wins OCM Bocas Prize" , ''Trinidad Express Newspapers'', 30 April 2011. the 2010 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herta Müller
Herta Müller (; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Nițchidorf (german: Nitzkydorf, link=no), Timiș County in Romania, her native language is German. Since the early 1990s, she has been internationally established, and her works have been translated into more than twenty languages. Müller is noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of the Socialist Republic of Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime which she has experienced herself. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania and are also a depiction of the modern history of the Germans in the Banat and Transylvania. Her much acclaimed 2009 novel ''The Hunger Angel'' (''Atemschaukel'') portrays the deportation of Romania's German minority to Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use as German forced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE ComSE GColCa (; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony ith which hecontinually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon The Western canon is the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West; works that have achieved the status of classics. However, not all these works originate in the Western world, and ...", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include '' The Birthday Party'' (1957), ''The Homecoming'' (1964) and ''Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between'' (1971), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), ''The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian (高行健 in Chinese - born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese émigré and later French naturalized novelist, playwright, critic, painter, photographer, film director, and translator who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity." He is also a noted translator (particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco), screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter. Gao's drama is considered to be fundamentally absurdist in nature and avant-garde in his native China. ''Absolute Signal'' (1982) was a breakthrough in Chinese experimental theatre. '' The Bus Stop'' (1983) and ''The Other Shore'' (1986) had their productions halted by the Chinese government, with the acclaimed ''Wild Man'' (1985) the last work of his to be publicly performed in China. He left the country in 1987 and his plays from ''The Other Shore'' onward increasingly centered on universal (rather than Chinese) concerns ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
