Finding the sworn virgin
Elvira Dones takes PEN Atlas to the mountains of Albania, where the story of an ancient custom, ideas about gender, and the resilient women who subverted both, helped the author to find a connection back to her homeland
PEN Transmissions
Articles
Who invented the graphic novel?
Ahead of European Literature Night, and the forthcoming British Library exhibition on comics, Paul Gravett writes about the history of the term 'graphic novel'
The Greatest Turkish Novel?
Kaya Genç discusses the cultural and literary legacy of Hamdi Tanpınar whose 1961 novel 'The Time Regulation Institute' was published this year as a Penguin Classic.
PEN Atlas Q&A: Otto Dov Kulka
PEN Atlas talks to Otto Dov Kulka, author of Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death
To start all over again
Santiago Gamboa writes a special PEN Atlas dispatch this week to commemorate Gabriel García Márquez, the way that he changed literature, and the deep love for his books from everyday readers to presidents
The apricot border with Russia, or separatism on Skype
With the growing troubles in Ukraine, poet and dramatist Liubov Iakymchuk writes for PEN Atlas
North Korean love poetry
Shirley Lee writes for PEN Atlas, in a week when Korea is the Market Focus for London Book Fair 2014
My Literary Form(s)
In the run-up to London Book Fair 2014, where Korea is the market focus, Han Kang writes about women that turn into plants, the intuitive process in choosing between prose and poetry, and what the future holds for her writing
The suffering healers
Ahead of his appearances with English PEN at the Free Word Centre and London Book Fair 2014, Hwang Sok-Yong takes us into the shamanistic past of Korean culture, and how those creation stories can be used to write about globalisation and modern suffering.
Once I Was a Dog
Jacek Hugo-Bader writes about the scavenging life of the journalist for this week's PEN Atlas, and how living down and out in Moscow and Warsaw prepared him for his bicycle and Volvo journeys across Central Asia
Capturing the mood
In the run-up to the London Book Fair 2014, where South Korea is the market focus, we have the first in a series of pieces from the region: today Chi Young-Kim writes about the varied places translators go to, from baseball blogs to animal fables, when transporting the reader into the world of the novel
In their leaves
To celebrate World Book Day, we're publishing a short story by Carole Martinez, translated by Howard Curtis.