It is a full moon and I am walking in Lodi Garden in the footsteps of Octavio Paz.  The night has mixed fragrances of Raat Ke Raani (the queen of the night) and the two stars shining from above in the clear sky of Delhi, one is Octavio Paz and the other is Pablo Neruda.

On the 11th of January a talk was organised by the London based Iranian society called "Society of promoting Persian language" and Afghan society of Culture and Art to celebrate the achievement of Mirza Assadullah Khan Ghalib as great Persian poet who lived in India.

 Jennifer Langer is the founder of EXILED WRITERS INK! - a lively London based organisation which promotes the work of poets from wartorn and repressive countries. She was interviewed by Raqi Smith.

Jennifer Langer is the founder of EXILED WRITERS INK! - a lively London based organisation which promotes the work of poets from wartorn and repressive countries. She was interviewed by Raqi Smith.

 Ivaylo Petrov, the prominent Bulgarian novelist, was born on 19 January 1923 in the village of Bdintzi, Bulgaria. Ivaylo Petrov is his pseudonym, his real name is Prodan Petrov Kyuchukov. There is a very interesting story why the writer chose that pseudonym: be brought his stories to the editors of a literary magazine in Varna, a big Bulgarian town at the Black Sea coast. The editor said the story was no good.

Zdravka Evtimova interviews the famous Bulgarian poet, bearer of Max Jacob International award for poetry, member of Mallarme Academy, Paris: My childhood passed along the banks of the Sruma River, the same Strymon River where King Lycurgue met and drove away Dionysus and his raging maenads who had made up their mind to enter Thrace. A king lacking wisdom – he could not understand that wine was a Gods’ gift; but this fact does not prevent Dionysus’ bacchantes’ orgiastic rites from continuing in these lands, since the Bulgarians, perhaps the only people in the East Orthodox world, could dress the ancient god in the garments of an orthodox saint, although the saint is a little bit drunk.

The skinny boy over there, in dark blue shorts, the last one in the row was my son. The lady from the nursery school had taken the kids to the park to play but he sat all by himself on a bench, silent as a fish. His name was Ivan, and I, his mother, had not seen him for ten months....

A Few Words About Mahshid Amirshahy
Mahshid Amir-Shahy occupies a place of choice in the gallery of Iranian authors. She started her career early in life and was soon hailed by art critics for her precocious talent as well as the high quality of her writings. Her refined prose, which became more and more sophisticated from book to book, promoted her to one of the most prominent figures of contemporary Persian literature.