In this segment of The Writer’s Block, the acclaimed Egyptian author and journalist Hamdy El-Gazzar discusses writing poetry, incorporating sex as a theme in his work, and the importance of letting the spirit of a text live in translation. El-Gazzar is also Sampsonia Way‘s Egypt columnist.
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Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, declared last month that, on the island, there would never be elections involving parties other than the Cuban Communist Party. If the legal route to a multiparty system is closed, what should Castro’s opponents do now?
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El ministro de Comercio Exterior e Inversión Extranjera, Rodrigo Malmierca declaró en noviembre que en la Isla nunca habrá elecciones con otro partido que no sea el comunista. Si la vía legal está cerrada para implementar el pluripartidismo, ¿qué deben hacer entonces los opositores a Castro?
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A poignant message delivered by the poet Maya Angelou on behalf of the American people in memory of Nelson Mandela who died on December 5.
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Shezanne Cassim, an American citizen, is being held in a maximum-security prison in the United Arab Emirates after posting a satirical YouTube video. He is the first foreign national to be charged with the country’s draconian cybercrimes decree.
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Nearly 800 writers, poets, journalists, translators, and editors are currently in prison around the world. Approximately one tenth of them are in Turkey, where an Anti-Terror Law has been broadly applied to target writers. Here PEN Turkey president explains and names the writers under threat.
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Writer Israel Centeno’s ‘search to ascribe a tangible meaning to the oblique feeling that goes above and beyond simple nostalgia’ has led him to a close reading of Fernando Pessoa’s works and the stories of Venezuelan writer Enza García Arreaza.
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