J.M. Coetzee's Blog

Until Turkey frees detained writers and returns to the rule of law, it cannot claim to be a member of the free world

Dear President Erdoğan,

We wish to draw your attention to the damage being done to the Republic of Turkey, to its reputation and the dignity and wellbeing of its citizens, through what leading authorities on freedom of expression deem to be the unlawful detention and wrongful conviction of writers and thinkers.

Related: Turkey sentences journalists to life in jail over coup attempt

Related: On eve of trial, Ahmet Altan writes how imagination sustains him in Turkish jail

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Ahmet Altan and his brother, Mehmet Altan, were taken away in a dawn raid on Saturday. We call for his release and for freedom of expression to be respected

We the undersigned call upon democrats throughout the world, as well as those who care about the future of Turkey and the region in which it exerts a leading role, to protest the vendetta the government is waging against its brightest thinkers and writers who may not share their point of view.

The background to this letter is the coup attempt on 15 July 2016, which mercifully failed and was quickly subdued. Had the Turkish people themselves not resisted this assault on their institutions, the result would have been years of misery.

Related: Brothers critical of Turkish government arrested after TV programme

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The jailed whistleblower turns 27 this week. Supporters including Joe Sacco, Vivienne Westwood, JM Coetzee, Michael Stipe and Slavoj Žižek sent her letters, poems and drawings. Luke Harding introduces their work

On Wednesday, Chelsea Manning – heroine, whistleblower and inmate – turns 27. She has been behind bars for four years and eight months, ever since her arrest for leaking ­classified US documents. There isn’t much prospect that she will be released any time soon. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence, with the earliest possibility of parole being in 2021. She has appealed to Barack Obama for a pardon. It seems unlikely he will grant it.

It is against this gloomy and unpropitious backdrop that leading writers, artists and public figures from around the world are today sending Chelsea birthday greetings. Their contributions include letters, poems, drawings and original paintings. Some are philosophical – yes, that’s you, Slavoj Žižek – others brief messages of goodwill. A few are ­movingly confessional.

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Gillian Slovo remembers how her fellow South African author's passion for the truth was coupled with a brilliant sense of humour

• Plus tributes from JM Coetzee, Justin Cartwright and Elizabeth Lowry

The first time I met Nadine Gordimer as an adult was after she won the Nobel prize for literature in 1991. I had heard of her ferocious reaction when anyone dared change a word, or even a comma, of her work, so I expected her to have self-confidence and a sharp tongue. But it had never occurred to me that she would be so funny.

Her description of her time at the award ceremony in Stockholm – first stop, a dinner-jacket fitting for the then scruffy poet and ANC representative Mongane Wally Serote; next step, the agony of making conversation with minor royalty – was hilarious. And at a subsequent meeting, in the chaotic runup to South Africa's first democratic election in 1994, Nadine had us in stitches on the floor with her re‑enactment of a conversation she'd just heard that morning on the radio between three people: Nelson Mandela, a clueless member of the public and someone pretending to be Mandela. She was a good mimic: I wouldn't have put it past her to have been the pretend Madiba.

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Gillian Slovo remembers how her fellow South African author's passion for the truth was coupled with a brilliant sense of humour

Plus tributes from JM Coetzee, Justin Cartwright and Elizabeth Lowry

The first time I met Nadine Gordimer as an adult was after she won the Nobel prize for literature in 1991. I had heard of her ferocious reaction when anyone dared change a word, or even a comma, of her work, so I expected her to have self-confidence and a sharp tongue. But it had never occurred to me that she would be so funny.

Her description of her time at the award ceremony in Stockholm first stop, a dinner-jacket fitting for the then scruffy poet and ANC representative Mongane Wally Serote; next step, the agony of making conversation with minor royalty was hilarious. And at a subsequent meeting, in the chaotic runup to South Africa's first democratic election in 1994, Nadine had us in stitches on the floor with her reenactment of a conversation she'd just heard that morning on the radio between three people: Nelson Mandela, a clueless member of the public and someone pretending to be Mandela. She was a good mimic: I wouldn't have put it past her to have been the pretend Madiba.

Continue reading...

The Czech novelist has fallen victim to a campaign of orchestrated slander

Eleven writers, including JM Coetzee, have signed a letter of support for the dissident Czech writer Milan Kundera, who they say has been wrongly accused of denouncing a western spy to communist authorities:

An attempt has recently been made to stir up a defamatory campaign with the aim of sullying the reputation of Milan Kundera. He is accused of having denounced a western spy to the authorities in 1950, when he was a student in communist Czechoslovakia.

The Czech novelist has fallen victim to a campaign of orchestrated slander

Eleven writers, including JM Coetzee, have signed a letter of support for the dissident Czech writer Milan Kundera, who they say has been wrongly accused of denouncing a western spy to communist authorities:

An attempt has recently been made to stir up a defamatory campaign with the aim of sullying the reputation of Milan Kundera. He is accused of having denounced a western spy to the authorities in 1950, when he was a s...