Lit news: Mario Vargas Llosa donates his 30,000 books

Nobel Laureate  Mario Vargas Llosa  donates the 30,000 books of his personal library to his hometown of Arequipa.

Salman Rushdie's India Today Conclave speech

"This word, freedom. It's a beautiful sounding word, isn't it? Who would be against freedom? It's a word everyone would automatically be "for", one would think. A free society is one in which a thousand flowers bloom, in which a thousand and one voices speak. And what a simple and grand idea that seems. It's like that copper goddess standing in the harbour, enlightening the world. 

But in our time, many essential freedoms are in danger of defeat and not only in totalitarian or authoritarian states. Here in India also, a combination of religious fanaticism, political opportunism and, I have to say, public apathy is damaging that freedom upon which all other freedoms depend: the freedom of expression." 

Ian McEwan on originality

In literature, everyone is first. We do not need to ask who was first to write Don Quixote. Better, in fact, to consider the possibility of being the second – Pierre Menard, who in Borges's famous story independently reconceives, centuries after Cervantes, the entire novel, down to the last word. The worst novelist in the world can at least be assured that he will be the first to write his terrible novel. And mercifully, the last. And yet, to be first, to originate, to be original is key to the quality of a work of literature. However minimally, it must advance – in subject matter, in means of expression – our understanding of ourselves, of ourselves in the world.

Elif Shafak interview

"Extremist ideologies all around the world are telling us that you have to make a choice, but it’s important to recognise that people can have multiple attachments"

Ivan Klima interview

I'm just finishing a book of many very short stories. Now it's 100 pages, and it's more or less finished. Twenty short stories all written in the past two years. What is specific about them is that they are very short, sometimes only half a page or one or two pages. I'm trying to be very strict and brief. Some are very short meditations or very quick observations of something and nothing more. It's something new in my writing.

Programming & Writing

“You’re talking to defined interfaces, not making up a whole world. With code, what it means is what it does. It doesn’t express, not really. It’s a very bounded conversation. And writing is not bounded. That’s what’s hard about it.”

Read an E-Book Week starts today!

"Read an E-book" week kicks in today.  Being an ardent indie, I offer my novel Shadowland (Coupon code RE 100) for free during this period ( March 4 -10) to those interested, especially to readers of  literary fiction.

Thanks for your reading. I'll appreciate any feedback from you.

Shalom Auslander on Franz Kafka

"Everything Kafka wrote began as a joke, that Franz, in his wisdom, took very seriously, taking it, in the words of Milan Kundera, into the "dark depths of the joke". Singing mice, talking apes, men who turn into bugs, cops who arrest you for no reason. This was Kafka's hilarious idea: life itself is a joke, and a joke we have no choice but to take seriously. That, however, doesn't mean it isn't funny."