LITERATURE

In a famous interview published in the Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway told George Plimpton that he had written the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied with…

Humans love a good animal story. Across time and cultures we tend to anthropomorphise animals in order to better look at ourselves. But how if those stories were truly told from the animal point…

They are stiff little men, and shiny. They stand alone in empty rooms. They stand pinned, exhibiting themselves, confronting or evading us. Franklin Pierce plays an old cocktail party trick and…

There is nothing new under the sun. The shout of Punk may come with modern trappings, but it is a cry heard in many an era, in many forms. Ancient Greek poet Archilochus, who voiced that cry in…

KUALA LUMPUR: I enter one of hundreds of bookshops in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. The air-conditioning hits you in the face like a cool storm. With the dense humidity outside, the cool…

It does seem that the sacred is not given much play any more – and good luck to it. Too often notions of the sacred are easily exposed as simply ludicrous – at best – and actually…

Cartoonist/writer/editor/producer – OK, Renaissance Man – Mort Todd has had a storied career in comics, music, television, and film. He’s worked everywhere from Cracked Magazine…

By Rowlinson Carter Those are the supposed dying words of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom one biographer described as being “the best platonic female company that Eighteenth Century England…

By Elisabeth Molnar Those saddest words of all are explored from both sides in Lionel Shriver’s novel “The Post-Birthday World”. Our reviewer finds you can’t really escape what might have…

Edwin Cameron is a senior judge in South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal and the only person in public office to acknowledge having HIV/AIDS. In his book Witness to AIDS he gives a frank account…