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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 readings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prague Writers' Festival Logo Color
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its Prague metropolitan area, metropolitan area is home to approximately 2.3 million people. Prague is a historical city with Romanesque architecture, Romanesque, Czech Gothic architecture, Gothic, Czech Renaissance architecture, Renaissance and Czech Baroque architecture, Baroque architecture. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1346–1378) and Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II (r. 1575–1611). It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austria-Hungary. The city played major roles in the Bohemian Reformation, Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations, the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plastic People Of The Universe
The Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) is a Czech Rock music, rock band from Prague. They are considered the foremost representatives of Prague underground (culture), Prague's underground culture (1968–1989), which defied Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, 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. Up to 2023, they had 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 Koláče ... [...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 protection, environmental causes. She was the winner of the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize, given by English PEN, and she named imprisoned British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah as the "Writer of Courage" with whom she chose to share the award. Early life Suzanna Arundhati Roy was born on 24 November, 1961 in Shillong in Undivided Assam (now in Meghalaya) into a Christianity in India, Christian family, to parents Mary Roy, a Malayali Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, Jacobite Syrian Christian women's rights activist from Kerala and Rajib Roy, a Bengali Christian tea plantation manager from Kolkata, West Bengal.Deb, Siddhartha (5 March 2014)"Arundhati Roy ... [...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 relationshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and an inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel ''The Handmaid's Tale.'' 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 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, 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 myth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM (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-German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Nițchidorf (; ), Timiș County in Romania; her native languages are German and Romanian. 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 Germans of Romania, 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 Gulag, Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago (; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese people, Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as Allegory, allegories, commonly present Subversion, subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the Theopoetics, 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", while James Wood (critic), James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant." More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. A proponent ... [...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 List of Nobel laureates in Literature, 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 (play), The Birthday Party'' (1957), ''The Homecoming'' (1964) and ''Betrayal (play), Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''The Servant (1963 film), The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between (1971 film), The Go-Between'' (1971), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman (film), The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), ''The Trial (1993 film), The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth (2007 film), 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 Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, Ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka , (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty five plays and five memoirs. He also wrote two translated works and many articles and short stories for many newspapers and periodicals. He is widely regarded as one of Africa's greatest writers and one of the world's most important dramatists. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence". Born into an Anglican Yoruba family in Aké, Abeokuta, Soyinka had a preparatory education at Government College, Ibadan and proceeded to the University College Ibadan. During his education, he co-founded the Pyrate Confraternity. Soyinka left Nigeria for England to study at the University of Leeds. During that period, he was the editor of the university's magazine, ''The Eagle'', before becoming a full-t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian ( zh, 高行健; 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 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature, 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 The Theatre of the Absurd, 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
