Letter from Rome
 
By Philip Willan
 
ROME — Four young Italian writers have banded together to create an association dedicated to protecting authors from the predatory practices of Italy’s publishing industry. Their initiative has coincided with nationwide protests against planned cuts to the government’s culture budget. In the space of a month, their Writers In Litigation website [...]

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ROME — The 13th bi-annual conference of the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers – (AICW) has been held over three days in Atri in the region of Abruzzo. The association was established in 1986 to give more visibility to the Italian-Canadian identity. Its members are Canadian writers and artists of Italian origin.
The President of the Association, Mrs Venera [...]

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EMBASSY ROW.
Italy-based British author Simon Mawer’s acclaimed novel about pre-war Czechoslovakia “The Glass Room” is on the shortlist for the brand-new £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The winner will be announced June 19 at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. The shortlist includes two other works which together with Mawer’s masterly opus, were [...]

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Commentary
 
J.D. Salinger’s literary estate may disclose vital clues to understanding the much-loved but enigmatic American writer, says FARLEY CLINTON.
 
At 14 this rich, good-looking boy learned to his astonishment that he was, at least from one point of view, not a Jew. He discovered this just after he had been feted with what was undoubtedly a [...]

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ALGIERS, Algeria — Acclaimed writer and journalist Michael Mewshaw’s ground-breaking book on an overland journey he made through North Africa has spawned tension between the United States and Algeria by disclosing American official concern and frustration over the fraught security situation in the energy-rich Maghreb nation.
Several Algerian websites including the English and French language sites [...]

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By PHILIP WILLAN
Rome—One of Italy’s most prestigious literary prizes faced the prospect of liquidation last week after allegations of sexual harassment by a majordomo from Mauritius snowballed into a full-blown fraud investigation.
    The Grinzane Cavour literary prize was the creation of Giuliano Soria, the son of a carpenter who created a multi-million euro cultural industry [...]

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Reviewed by Michael Burleigh
 
The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 cinematic masterpiece, has powerfully shaped western perceptions of Algeria. The film (which features scenes of Algerian freedom fighters being electrocuted by French torturers to the sound of Bach’s musical epiphanies) incarnates the semi-religious national myth that the victorious National Liberation Front (FLN) imposed on [...]

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The Sustainability Mirage Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change. By John Foster. Earthscan. £19.99 paperback.

Reviewed by ANDREA MARKOS
 Brilliantly and ironically written, this book shades a bright light on most foggy areas around the concept of sustainability. Those fastidious obscure points do not fit properly in the reassuring technical solutions to [...]

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 From Desmond O’Grady  
 
Book review: Gli scrittori stranieri raccontano Roma
 Curator: Sergio Campailla
Newton Compton Editori Euro 20

  In the nineteenth century the papacy lost its hold on Rome which, from 1870, became the capital of united Italy. It was a century when the papacy was mainly on the defensive with its governmental reforms changing too little and too [...]

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 By DESMOND O’GRADY       

 Katherine Mansfield has returned to San Remo in an exhibition which runs until Jan. 10 at the civic museum.
        Passages from her letters written in San Remo , copies of her books and magazines which published her short stories, and photographs of San Remo in the autumn-winter 1918-19 she spent there [...]

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