Author: Manasi Gopalakrishnan

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Booker Prize-winning novelist and prolific essayist Arundhati Roy (photo: Getty Images(AFP)

Arundhati Roy: India's voice of conscience

Writing is activism

Frequently outspoken in her criticism of political developments in her home country India and around the world, Booker Prize-winning novelist and prolific essayist Arundhati Roy has proven that politics and fiction do go hand-in-hand. By Manasi GopalakrishnanMore

Arundhati Roy's "Azadi": Narendra Modi is pushing Indian society to the brinkInterview with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy: "India is much more dangerous than it was ten years ago""The Ministry of Utmost Happiness": Novelist Arundhati Roy: "India is colonising itself"Interview with novelist and activist Arundhati Roy: "We're up against a fascist regime in India"
Women queue up for cash at a World Food Program site in Kabul, Afghanistan, 20 November 2021 (photo: Petros Giannakouris/AP/picture-alliance)

Afghanistan

A brief history of Afghan women's rights

For over a century, Afghanistan's rulers and ethnic groups have been arguing about what women should do and how they should be. Women haven't had much say. By Manasi GopalakrishnanMore

Taliban Afghanistan: Afghan girls attend "secret school"Women's rights: Taliban revoke Afghan women's hard-won rightsReconstruction in Afghanistan: The strong women of Darul AmanQantara photo essay: Afghanistan's modern past
Egyptian author Nadia Wassef (photo: Dany Eid Photography)

Diwan and the dialogue of cultures

Nadia Wassef's bookshop memoir – a chronicle of Egypt's upheaval

Egyptian author Nadia Wassef talks about opening the first independent bookstore in her home country; and her latest book in which she celebrates books and booksellers. By Manasi GopalakrishnanMore

A reading Renaissance: Kurdistan′s Book Cafe: In praise of female entrepreneursCOVID-19 on the Nile: How coronavirus snuffed out my bookseller's lifeBook review: Mohamed Elshahed's "Cairo Since 1900": In pursuit of other modernisms10 years of Arabellion: The buds of the Arab Spring
A female artist at work in Afghanistan (photo: Shah Maral/AFP/Getty Images)

Last stand for Afghanistan's art scene?

Afghan artists react to the Taliban takeover

Particularly threatened by the Taliban, some artists are trying to destroy all proof of their work. Others are creating last pieces as a form of resistance. Manasi Gopalakrishnan reportsMore

Afghan female artists in Berlin: Straightening the picturesPortrait: Massoud Hossaini: The photographer from KabulAfghan director Salim Shaheen: Master of dreams Islamic art: Iconoclasm: the counter-narrativeQantara photo essay: "Talibanned": From kite-running to breakdancing – not again!