A Mature Society Understands That At The

What I've Always Tried To Find In My Books Are Points At Which The Private Lives Of The Characters, And Also My Own, Intersect With The Public Life Of The Culture.

The Accidents Of My Life Have Given Me The Ability To Make Stories In Which Different Parts Of The World Are Brought Together, Sometimes Harmoniously, Sometimes In Conflict, And Sometimes Both - Usually Both. The Difficulty In These Stories Is That If You Write About Everywhere You Can End Up Writing About Nowhere.

The Pen/barbara Goldsmith Freedom To Write Award Is A Way Of Spotlighting Individual Cases. If You Look At The History Of The Award, The Freedom Rate Is Very High: A Very High Percentage Of People Who Receive Those Awards Are Freed In The Next Six Months To A Year. The Only Weapon There Is Attention, But Interestingly It Works.

War Used To Be Something You Could Stand On The Nearby Hill And Watch. Now We Have Total War; Everybody's In It. We Have Total Economics As Well. Everything Affects Everybody. The Malaysian Currency Shakes, And People Around The World Are Seriously Affected.

I Don't Think It Is Always Necessary To Take Up The Anti-colonial -- Or Is It Post-colonial? -- Cudgels Against English. What Seems To Me To Be Happening Is That Those People Who Were Once Colonized By The Language Are Now Rapidly Remaking It, Domesticating It, Becoming More And More Relaxed About The Way They Use It -- Assisted By The English Language's Enormous Flexibility And Size, They Are Carving Out Large Territories For Themselves Within Its Frontiers.