Less than seven years ago Alex and Bella babysitted this young lad at Darling Point, Bellevue Hill and even Helsinki, but, today he is independent as the next virtual Bill Gates. Robert Scoble et al may I introduce you to the extraordinary Antipodean-Finnish mover and risk taking skater Aleksi
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Inspiration bubbles over for winning wordsmith: Ismail Kadaré
There would be a grave risk of you thinking a writer who has travelled two thousand kilometres to be here a little simple-minded and banal if he were to begin his speech with a hymn declaring his faith in literature, and saying, more precisely, that literature is what made him a free man.
Believing in literature means believing in a reality above that which is. Believing in literature means saying that the ghastly regime holding sway over your country is altogether insipid, compared to literature in all its funereal majesty. Believing in that art means being convinced that the regime to which you are subjected, with its policemen who spy on you, its top leaders and its functionaries -- in sum, that the entire edifice of tyranny is but a passing nightmare, something dead in comparison to the Supreme order whose disciple you now are.
But the tacit suggestion that Mr. Kadare was a dissident, like Vaclav Havel or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, is very misleading. Mr. Kadare could never have survived and published under the Hoxha regime without some degree of cooperation, the complete details of which are not yet entirely clear. Mr. Kadare himself only claims that his writing was ipso facto an act of defiance. "Every time I wrote a book," he has said, "I had the impression that I was thrusting a dagger into the dictatorship."
• ODDEST YET: a miracle of Biblical proportions [Little-known author's win sparks battle to find books Booker Prize Winner Surprised at Award ; Booker Prize is satisfying to dissident Google on Mystery of Man: Just Who Is Ismail Kadare? ; Mr. Kadare is a grimly political writer The Palace of Dreams ]
• · THE Albanian dissident novelist and winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize has revealed how Scotland provided vital inspiration for him growing up under a repressive Communist regime Macbeth’s castle inspired a writer raised under communism ; Britain's literary scene is so parochial that there is virtually a conspiracy against readers experiencing the best of the world's literature. Worthy winner despite language restrictions UK readers deprived of world literature ; If you really want to be happy, throw away your television set. That's the bizarre finding of new economic research completely at odds with traditional assumptions Thief of time
• · · This is the story of a Maryland woman who is retiring after twenty years of driving a school bus. Driving into the future ; Necessity, or much ado about nothing? Ten Myths about the Ten Commandments
• · · · Is it possible at the dawn of the 21st century that an entire university could be driven into exile in Europe? From exile, a beacon of hope for Belarus ; Seachange cities’ to reinvent themselves over first three decades of 21st century
• · · · · Umberto Eco's new novel about memory really postmodern ... In Search of Lost Time ; There's good chick lit and bad chick lit, just as there's good literary fiction and bad literary fiction Literary bonbons
• · · · · · European Rivers are trecherous: William Mather-Brown, 41, died after diving into the Le Var River in the city of St Laurent du Val in the south of France when his daughter Olivia got into difficulties on Sunday afternoon Australian film director drowns in France ; Their first taste of freedom in almost four years was almost too much for the Rahmati family. Refugee family free at least
