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Theme: Myanmar

Editorial

The Myitkyina Library

The conflict in Myanmar concerns a struggle between democracy and dictatorship. After a decade characterized by a slow...

Editorial: Jesper Bengtsson October 01 2021
Poetry

A Poem by Ma Thida

Ma Thida is a Burmese human rights activist, surgeon, writer, and former prisoner of conscience. In October 1994, she was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in Insein Prison on the charges of...

Poem: Ma Thida November 05 2021
Fiction

Extract from the novel "In the shadow of the monk"

The author Helena Thorfinn's latest novel "In the shadow of the monk" takes place in Myanmar during the short time that the country opened up to the outside world. In this short extract, we are in...

Text: Helena Thorfinn October 22 2021
Poetry

About the skulls - a poem by K Zar Win

The poet K Zar Win, whose poems have appeared in Myanmar magazines since 2004, was killed in a protest in Monywa March 3 2021. K Zar Win was born to a peasant family in Latpadaung near Monywa in 1982...

Poem: K Zar Win October 01 2021
Poetry

Flower Revolution

Khet Mar (born 1969) is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist. As a twenty-two-year-old university student, she was arrested for her political activism, tortured, and sentenced to ten...

Text: Khet Mar October 01 2021

Theme: Writers in exil

Editorial

Writers in exil

It is now ten years since Swedish PEN started its international online publication PEN/Opp, which up until 2019 was...

Editorial: Marit Kapla September 10 2021
Article

Russian Culture in Light of Refugees from Mariupol

In this nuanced literary essay, Putin opponent Dmitry Kuzmin tries to answer the question of whether all Russian culture is evil. He is a Ukrainian-to-Russian translator and editor-in-chief of the...

Text: Dmitry Kuzmin January 17 2023
Poetry

Selected Poems by Mizar Kemal

Mizar Kemal is an Iraqi poet and journalist. He is a guest writer in the Swedish city of Stockholm. These poems were translated in a workshop in the city of Umeå, north of Sweden, during the...

Poems: Mizar Kemal May 29 2022
Interview

Not my Egypt

Ahmed Naji is trying to understand the zeitgeist. In the 36 years of his life he has witnessed dictatorship, revolution, counter-revolution, military coup, jail and exile. Ahmed Naji’s story is unique...

Interview by Edgar Mannheimer February 19 2022
Fiction

Scabs on the soul

PenOpp publishes a chapter from the Turkish author Barbaros Altuğ's novel Spiritual Wounds, which was published in Turkish last year. The novel's main character Derin, a Turkish journalist who grew up...

Text: Barbaros Altuğ January 21 2022
Article

Return to the Nightmare

Dara Abdallah is a Syrian poet and writer, born in the city of Qamishli in 1990. He lives in Berlin since 2013, and studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University. He...

Text: Dara Abdallah December 17 2021
Poetry

Poem by Hoda Khamosh

Hoda Khamosh is poet, media activist, and women’s rights activist from Afghanistan. She attended the Merci Poetry Festival in Gotenburg the 4 th of September through a recorded video. She read this...

Poem: Hoda Khamosh September 24 2021
Article

Crisis and Unrepresentability

PEN/Opp publishes “Crisis and unrepresentability” – a new written lecture by the Syrian author, thinker and the Tucholsky Prize winner Yassin Al-Haj Saleh. The lecture was previously presented in...

Text: Yassin Al-Haj Saleh September 10 2021

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