Migrations of the Mind

Writers are the ideas-traffickers of the twenty-first century. Smuggled inside novels, plays and memoirs they transmit thoughts across borders. Migrations of the Mind is a day-long PEN/ICA conference

12pm: Jung Chang’s books are tightly censored in China, but these controls are counter-productive, giving her work added cachet. In the opening lecture, Jung Chang, author of the international bestseller Wild Swans, describes the fate of her new biography of Mao, which has just been released in Taiwan. Has the book even made it into China – and if so, with what effect?

Women on the Verge of a Cultural Breakdown
2pm: The Turkish novelist Elif Shafak has been hailed as the new Orhan Pamuk. She joins Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic – whose The Ministry of Pain was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2006 – and Monica Ali to ask why women so often find themselves on the front line of cultural collisions.

Stages of Defiance
3.15pm: When does mob rule become state censorship? Playwright Gary Mitchell has been personally threatened as a result of his controversial dissections of an entrenched culture, whilst Alan Rickman’s * production of My Name is Rachel Corrie was withdrawn from a New York theatre after intense pressure. In conversation with David Edgar *, they will explore why the stage arouses such extreme passions.
(*speakers to be confirmed)

East Meets West
5pm: The Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun has long lived in self-imposed exile in Paris. In the closing speech he explores the confrontation between the cultures that drive his work and asks whether the confrontation between Western and Islamic cultures is a clash of civilizations, or just another battle between rich and poor.

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