Aamer Hussein is a Pakistani-born writer who lives in England. The 52-year-old has previously published three collections of short stories and edited an anthology of short stories by Pakistani women. His first book, Mirror to the Sun (1993), whose subjects range from romance and scandal in a Muslim family to the death of an Indonesian boy protesting against the first Gulf war, is written in an exquisite yet lyrical style [...]

The narrator of "In a White Town", a poem in Daljit Nagra's debut collection, used to feel embarrassed when his mother went to market wearing a "pink kameez and baloon'd bottoms". He admits that "I would have felt more at home had she hidden/that illiterate body". The phrase "illiterate body" tells us she cannot read and write, but also implies that she is unreadable to English people (perhaps including her [...]

Among families from the Indian subcontinent, the only thing worse than being shameful is to be shameless. When you do something wrong, shame is automatically brought on you and your family; to be told that you are "shameful" is a reminder of this obvious truth. What really arouses general anger, however, is for a person to face his guilt without blushing: not even acknowledging his shame.

There was recent controversy [...]

When Boswell suggested to Johnson that it was difficult to refute the "ingenious sophistry" of Bishop Berkeley - who asserted that the world existed only in our perceptions - Johnson fam ously exclaimed, as he kicked a stone: "I refute it thus." However, recent scholarship has shown that Boswell often reconstructed scenes and dialogue for his Life of Johnson years afterwards. Can we be sure the incident happened?

Johnson made [...]

In an eloquent lecture delivered 30 years ago, the novelist Wilson Harris described the moment that shaped his writing career. While working as a government surveyor in his native Guyana, he went on many expeditions by river. On one occasion, the anchor of his boat got stuck in the riverbed. Strong rapids were about to capsize the boat, so the crew cut the anchor loose. Travelling in the same place [...]