By Thomas Sanfilip It is no secret that politics and literature have shared a long history together, often producing great literature in the process—Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, Alfred Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and others. But except for using political conflict as merely the backdrop to rather…
The literary world has long been fascinated by the “difficult” woman. For centuries, female protagonists were expected to be paragons of virtue—the “Angel in the House.” But some of history’s most enduring characters are those who refused to fit the…
By: Bruce Levine The art of geniosityMore than just an M & M in a bagFocused on the best and the worstThe universe has to bringAdding together the good and the badInto a formula for profusion of ideasA plethora of…
By: James Aitchison Each day you formyour eternal self,shaped by a myriad testsand endless humanintersections.You are wrought inthe flames of life’s fire,and by the vandalism ofhuman emotions.In the self-honest silenceexamine your own spirituality,and let it magnifya hundredfold.
South India’s most anticipated celebration of literature, Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters returns for its 7thedition from 29th January to 1st February 2026, at the iconic Kanakakkannu Palace, Thiruvanthapuram, capital of Kerala. The upcoming edition of this festival turns its focus on…
By: Ron Riekki Poem about the PTSD counselor yelling at me to relax, to just relax, and yelling doesn’t help. And that’s it. That’s the whole poem. About how yelling doesn’t help. You’d think a PTSD counselor would know this,…
By: James Aitchison Few British novelists have captured the world’s imagination as completely as C. S. Forester. And, in the process, his cinematic writing style inspired major Hollywood movies. Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1899, as Cecil Louis Troughton Smith,…
The 2024–2025 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize has been awarded to Bitan Chakraborty and Malati Mukherjee for their remarkable work, The Blight and Seven Short Stories (Shambhabi The Third Eye Imprint, 2024). The laureates were revealed through the Prize’s official online…
By: Shailendra Chauhan The passing of Vinod Kumar Shukla is not merely the passing of an individual; it is the passing of a language that spoke very softly, said a great deal in very few words, and—away from noise—found profound…
By James Aitchison Nassau, the Bahamas. 8 July 1943. It was after midnight when Sir Harry Oakes, aged 68, one of the world’s richest men, was murdered with a silver ice pick from Simpsons-in-the-Strand. It punctured the side of his…