Just watched this TED video of a speech by Turkish author Elif Shafak. She argues against seeing writers in terms of identity politics, associated with their lands of origin rather than as individuals.
This blog isn't quite helping, I guess - I've got a marked preference for writers who're writing about their native countries, which means that I'm even strategising about reading only Maryse Conde's fiction about Guadeloupe rather than her most famous book, "Segu", which about Mali. Same goes for Mario Vargas Llosa - so many places rave about his "The Time of the Goat", but that won't do, because he's Peruvian and he's writing about the Dominican Republic...
Am also more convinced than ever of Wena Poon's wisdom in writing about international characters in "The Proper Care of Foxes". Me, I'm still stuck in provincial nationalist literature. That's when I do fiction, anyway. Sigh.
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