Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This is a beautiful set of short stories on what it is like for young immigrants to experience democracy, warts and all, for the first time, and to negotiate these new freedoms. It’s a very personalised journey through free expression, through greater religious tolerance, through sexual freedom and exploitation, through the minimum wage and economic exploitation. It’s a journey through the various isms rather than using an ism.
You have decided to end with fiction, The Thing Around Your Neck.
This is an extremely evocative book. Chimamanda, a young Nigerian author who has spent some time in America and some time in England, did a previous novel on the Biafran war. But this is a beautiful set of short stories on what it is like for young immigrants to experience democracy, warts and all, for the first time, and to negotiate these new freedoms. It’s a very personalised journey through free expression, through greater religious tolerance, through sexual freedom and exploitation, through the minimum wage and economic exploitation. It’s a journey through the various isms rather than using an ism. And it is very compelling. As so many people observe, often the messages are best delivered through narrative.
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John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship, a London-based organisation set up in 1972 by the poet Stephen Spender and a group of intellectuals, originally to campaign for freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. After a career in political journalism at Reuters, the Daily Telegraph, the BBC and Financial Times, culminating in an award-winning three years as editor of the New Statesman, John joined Index in 2008. Most recently, he has spearheaded a campaign to reform the UK’s libel laws – laws which he says have made London courts a magnet for anyone with cash wishing to suppress inconvenient information.
