In Mexico City, a refuge for world’s writers
Haven from persecution gives chance at better life

by Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Feb. 24, 2008 12:00 AM

MEXICO CITY – When the paramilitaries burst through his door, beat him and pointed a Kalashnikov rifle at his chest, poet Xhevdet Bajraj knew it was time to get as far from Kosovo as possible.

It was 1999, NATO bombs were falling on the province, and Yugoslav troops were fighting pitched battles with ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Serbian paramilitaries were torching homes and locking up anyone who might be perceived as a leader – even semifamous poets. Bajraj joined the thousands of refugees streaming into Albania.

Then came an invitation from a most unlikely place. Mexico City had just opened a safe house for persecuted writers, one of several social projects launched by the capital’s new, liberal government. Bajraj and his family were welcome to come, city officials said.

And so, shell-shocked and tired, carrying nothing but two packs of cigarettes, Bajraj, his wife and two sons became the first of a string of writers and their families given shelter in the Citlaltepetl Refuge House, a renovated mansion in a leafy neighborhood of the world’s second-largest city.

“I feel like I was reborn in that house,” Bajraj said. Now a naturalized Mexican citizen, he lives nearby and teaches poetry at a Mexico City university.

Since opening in 1999, the refuge has housed writers under threat in Myanmar, Egypt, Chad, Algeria and Serbia. The refuge has room for one or two families at a time and is now in talks to host a writer from Iraq, director Philippe Olle-Laprune said.

They’re part of a long tradition of writers who have found refuge in Mexico City, from Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez to American Beat writer William S. Burroughs, a fugitive from U.S. drug charges.

“We have a history of taking in these kinds of people, and they have enriched us as a city,” said Isabel Molina, director of cultural relations for Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
» Read the Complete Story from the Arizona Republic

MORE INFORMATION:

• Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl Website
• VIDEO

Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular
Original Source

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.
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