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

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

"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...

"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."

"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."

"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."

Krisztina Tóth's second short story for PEN/Opp - a multi-layered tale of hierarchy and inequality.

A piece of "flash fiction" by Hungarian writer Krisztina Tóth, presenting a haunting snap-shot of everyday life in Budapest today.

Writer Orsolya Karafiáth was fiercely attacked for her attempts to spotlight how Hungarian women are repressed and silenced in the wake of #MeToo. This is her story.

Anouar Rahmani risks jail time because of what he writes. PEN/Opp publish an extract from one of the texts that is currently being investigated by the authorities. The City of White Shadows is an...

Max Lobe (1986) was born in Douala, Cameroon, and now lives in Switzerland. His first novel, 39 Rue de Berne, which portrays a gay man was awarded with the 2014 Prix du Roman des Romands. Lobes...

”I am not threatening Erdoğan, I am warning him. I tell him not to wish for civil war. I am saying the same thing today. Civil war is terrifying. Is it a crime to say this?”

”I removed the foil paper from the box of Akhtamar cigarettes that I had in my pocket and started writing my will on the scuffed paper. I was handcuffed and trembling with fear.”

Some of those outside are within the country. In a sense, they are “inside” too. Their houses could be raided any moment, they or their families could be detained, their passports could be confiscated...