Paris Review 185

Binyavanga Wainaina’s Kenyan literary magazine Kwani? has received a considerable amount of press in the West (such as from Vanity Fair), as has South Africa’s Chimurenga (in The New York Times)–but what of other African literary magazines? A writer in The New Times wondering about Rwanda’s literature posits that the nation’s writers need literary magazines. There is a new magazine covering Punjabi literature of the Indian/Pakistani border: Sanjh. On the other side of the globe, news from Antigua: Bim, “possibly the most significant literary magazine the Caribbean has ever known,” is planning a relaunch. In an essay from Granta online,”J.M. Coetzee and his censors,” Coetzee is quoted saying that writing under threat of censorship from the South African government is “‘like being intimate with someone who does not love you.” The 2008 Beijing Olympics are on the way and all eyes are on China (especially over at PEN). In the most recent Paris Review, eccentric Chinese interview phenom Liao Yiwu interviews Yang Wenchang, forty-year-old survivor of the recently devastating eight-magnitude Sichuan earthquake. While you’re at the PR site, check out Andre Aciman’s Ellie nominated story, “Monsieur Kalashnikov.” If you haven’t read it, you are missing one of the most enjoyable depictions in contemporary fiction of the immigrant experience. Coming up, the local news…