Mirrors of a Nation

The World Voices Festival is PEN America’s annual celebration of writers, international literature, and free expression. This year’s festival is an insistence on the power of literature and cross-cultural dialogue and a potent reminder—in fact, an antidote in an era of censorship, nativism, and renewed isolationism—that books drive culture and the stories we tell can shape and transform our lives. The Goethe-Institut New York is pleased to host events again this year as part of the festival.

Certain moments drastically reroute whole national trajectories and indelibly shape their futures. This event brings together three internationally acclaimed writers whose recent historical novels capture periods of political upheaval and transformation.

In River Spirit, Leila Aboulela evokes the Mahdist revolution in Sudan in the years leading up to Sudan’s colonization by the British. Hamburg-based Georgian author Nino Haratischwili’s The Lack of Light (tr. Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin) follows four lifelong friends as they come of age amid Georgia’s turbulent years of independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mohammed Hanif’s satiric Rebel English Academy captures Pakistan in the throes of a manic crisis, both personal and political.

Join us as bestselling and critically acclaimed author Amitava Kumar (My Beloved Life) leads Aboulela, Hanif, and Haratischwili in a discussion about capturing pivotal moments in a nation’s history and exploring questions of witness, survival, and whose lives are valued.