Shahrazad - Stories for life

The International House of Literature Passa Porta is celebrating its 5th birthday. On this special occasion, we open the new season on the 25th of September at 8 p.m. with a Passa Porta Lecture.

Carlos Aguilera (Cuba), Zurab Rtveliashvili (Georgia) and Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador) are all making appearances at the upcoming Book Fair.

Stavanger Kulturhus is hosting the 15th Kapittel festival this week. Every day during the festival, ICORN writers read their work in a series of events called "Church Asylum in the Cathedral". The series features Manal Alsheikh, Abu Al Teman, Mansur Rajih, Chenjerai Hove, and Mansour Koushan. Basim Mardan is in Stavanger to introduce the film "Heavy Metal in Bagdad". 

Do you want to know how young people in the UK view Europe and their
place in it? Writers' Centre Norwich has offered free Digital Stories

Do you want to know how young people in the UK view Europe and their place in it?

Over the course of three days last week, Baroj Akrayi (poet and short story writer, lives in Stockholm), Nazand Begikhani (poet and researcher at the University of Bristol), Ayaz Khonsyawashan (writer, journalist and ICORN Guest Writer in Bergen), Hossein Heidary (journalist and ICORN Guest Writer in Bergen), Pedro Carmona-Alvarez (writer, translator and musician, lives in Bergen), Frode Grytten (writer, lives in Bergen), Odveig Klyve (writer, film director and translator, lives in Stavanger), Chro Borhan (writer, born in Kurdistan, lived in Norway since she was four years old), Inghill Johansen (writer and teacher, lives in Asker), and Betreand Besigye (writer, born in Uganda, lives in Oslo) participated in literary events in Bergen, Stavanger and Oslo. Cathrine Strøm hosted all three evenings.

When author of bestsellers such as Broken Paradise (Drømmehjerte) and Tarnished Beauty (Senõr Peregrino) visited Stavanger to talk about her new book Vigil (Salvadoreña), the event crew had to search Stavanger Kulturhus for more than 100 extra chairs.

Dejan Anastasijevic is a journalist who had to leave Serbia. Nowadays he lives in Brussels as an ICORN guest writer.

The youths are on the loose in Norway, campaigning. Young men and women, all over the place. The pavements are red, not with human blood, but with red roses. My most favourite party is the one distributing red roses. Young men and women giving you a rose at every street corner. They talk to you rather gently, persuasively, wondering if you would like the bunch of roses. I never refuse roses except those given by some god-forsaken dictator. I know even tyrants like roses.

As I return to my desk, I have more than twenty red roses in my hands, as if I have just come from a flower shop to buy flowers for for birthdays and other special occasions.

I cannot resist thinking of home, election time, Zanu(PF) against the rest of the world, a matter of life and death.