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Fiction

Fiction

(the business of living)

Carlos Egaña is one of Venezuela’s most prominent poets. Like many other poets of his generation he mainly publishes his poetry online. Internet has become a second home since traditional media are...

Text: Carlos Egaña January 22 2019
Fiction

Caracas—the City of Flies

The flies of Caracas have taken control of the journalist Luz Mely Reyes’ life. Over the past year a great amount of garbage is seen to litter the neighbourhood where she lives. The inevitable flies...

Text: Luz Mely Reyes January 22 2019
Fiction

The Country of Broken Mirrors

The crisis in Venezuela is worsening. The political, economical, humanitarian, and social developments in the country have in the year 2018 forced two million people to flee their homes. “The country...

Text: Fedosy Santaella January 22 2019
Fiction

Super-Cheap Scenes

With her blog called Escenas baratonas (Super-Cheap Scenes), the writer Margarita Arribas Zamora has renewed the well-known Venezuelan genre costumbrismo (depictions of daily life). Here we are...

Text: Margarita Arribas Zamora January 22 2019
Fiction

Letter to my niece

There are rights in Hong Kong that don’t exist in China, but these have been more and more eroded in later years. Tammy Ho Lai-ming, poet, editor and vice chairperson of PEN Hong Kong gives in a...

Text: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming November 29 2018
Fiction

Silent siege

Suzanne Ibrahim is a well-known Syrian poet, author and journalist. The everyday life and rights of women have dominated her writing and journalistic work. She left Syria in 2018 after having been...

Text: Suzanne Ibrahim November 29 2018
Fiction

When I entered a poetry competition

“In 1988, a curse fell on my family when I was born: I was a female in a traditional family that was very religious and had Bedouin origins.” This is how the architect and poet Doaa Abou Shaghibeh...

Text: Doaa Abou Shaghibeh November 29 2018
Fiction

In the ice

"Between your experiences of living both in your homeland and your host country, you experience psychological and existential difficulties, so when do you have the peace of mind to conform?"

Text: Afrah Nasser September 11 2018
Fiction

Martyrdom

"He wished he could have said something. His throat is so dry it feels he has been choked to death, but the eyes are still alive. He shook."

TEXT: Basima Al-Takrouri September 11 2018
Fiction

I am a man and my name is Wissam

"When signs of femininity started showing on my body I was keen to hide them. Not even my own family accepted me."

TEXT: Nasreen (Wissam) Ben Khemisa September 11 2018
Fiction

The House in Manbij

"I come from Manbij a city that just like all other Syrian cities has suffered bombings, death, liberation, and where kings of all forms and colours have passed through."

TEXT: Aboud Saeed September 11 2018
Fiction

I write to the one I love

"I challenge myself: write, your heart is yours regardless of your mother tongue or the tyrant’s language. Rapidly I transform into a brave lover—exactly, I will write to my dearest."

TEXT: Dlovan Kassab September 11 2018
Fiction

In Saudi Arabia, the Prince has no Clothes

"His capricious and absolutist decisions will only lead to disaster. But the only choice we have is to applaud him, emigrate, or be jailed—and in the worst case, have our throats slashed."

TEXT: Hanaa Alkhamri September 11 2018
Fiction

The Walls of Stockholm

"My name is carved into all the trees / and scribbled on all the buses / despite how I cannot write a single word… "

Text: Wafai laila September 11 2018
Fiction

Kurds have only their weddings

"Everyone joins in the fun until the singer switches to a loud lament about the massacre in Halabja—no one can understand the sudden change—and soon the bride is in tears and the groom too and grief...

TEXT: Lukman Derky: Lukman Derky September 11 2018

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