All posts tagged "Literature"

Los Angeles (AFP) - Tens of thousands of books are banned from US prisons, a new report said Wednesday, including a primer on drawing, a book about tying knots and textbooks teaching inmates foreign languages. Prison authorities across the country cite vague "security" fears or worries over sexual content for their bans, which prevent some of America's 1.2 million inmates from reading often innocuous-sounding texts sent by friends, campaigners, publishers or bookstores. A study by PEN America, a literacy and free expression advocacy group, found widely differing and often inconsistently enforc......

Gray Horse (United States) (AFP) - Martin Scorsese's new film "Killers of the Flower Moon" recounts how the Osage nation of Native Americans gained significant oil wealth in the early 20th century and the murderous plot by outsiders to seize it. Ahead of the movie's US release, AFP looks at the real-life story behind the film, which was adapted from US author David Grann's 2017 book of the same name. Who are the Osage?The Osage, a Native American nation which grew out of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, was forcibly relocated by the US government in the late 19th century westward to a r......

New York (AFP) - Cormac McCarthy, whose unflinching depictions of America's bleak frontiers and grim underbelly earned him global acclaim, died on Tuesday aged 89. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men" -- both of which became feature films -- passed away of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his publisher said, citing his son. Over his nearly six-decade long career, McCarthy won major literary awards at home and abroad for a dozen soul-wrenching novels written in sparse, piercing prose. Considered a demanding but honest writer, his clinic......

New York (AFP) - British author Salman Rushdie said he finds it "very difficult" to write after being stabbed last year, in an interview published Monday ahead of the release of his new novel "Victory City." Rushdie, whose "epic tale" of a 14th-century woman who defies a patriarchal world to rule a city hits US shelves on Tuesday, said the attack had scarred him mentally. "There is such a thing as PTSD you know," the 75-year-old told the New Yorker magazine in his first interview since the August 12 stabbing at a conference in Chautauqua in upstate New York. "I've found it very, very difficult......

New York (AFP) - The popular US novelist Paul Auster is turning his sights on America's epidemic of gun violence in a hard-hitting, 100-page essay that features photos from mass shootings. "Bloodbath Nation" (Grove Press) is due to be published on Tuesday in the United States. The writing in this new work by Auster, 75, is terse and somber and is accompanied by pictures taken by photographer Spencer Ostrander. Auster says one of the reasons he is writing it is a family secret that was kept from him until he was a young man.  "The truth comes down to this: on January 23, 1919," he writes in the......

Future strategist and bestselling author John Sanei says that society should ‘prepare for all eventualities’ when contemplating the future despite adding that there is no way to actually future-proof the future. “The only thing we can manage is our behaviour and if we are creating an adaptable behaviour towards the future, then it really doesn't matter what the future brings us. And so there is no certainty anymore,” he told Euronews. John was speaking at the first edition of the Dubai Future Forum at the Museum of the Future in the emirate. He said, “It's incredible to get 400 of the top futu......