Trying to contact Tim Winton appears to be no easy matter. A couple of false starts, and a period of waiting is required before Three Monkeys finally manages to get in touch with the Australian author. The surprise then is how engaged Winton is once contact has been made. His remoteness a physical reality rather […]
Isabel Allende, the world famous Chilean writer and niece of the deceased Chilean president Salvador Allende, takes it with a sense of humor and a pinch of patience that, despite being one of the main representatives of literature produced in Spanish and a key character in Spanish literary circles, in some countries she is still […]
Censorship is not limited to totalitarian States. It can be a subtle thing, when disconcerting ideas are not banned, but, through various means, marginalised. Dr. Mary Condren’s groundbreaking work The Serpent and the Goddess, a study on women, religion and power in Celtic Ireland, was never placed on an index of banned books, and yet […]
I was anxious to meet Brendan Kennelly, the internationally renowned poet and for almost 40 years Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Not only to conduct this interview with him for Three Monkeys, but finally to ask him the meaning of a phrase I had heard him use many years ago when I […]
Within the confined space of the walled city of Medicean Florence was a web formed of overlapping identities and loyalties: family and kin, parish, neighbourhood, gonfalone and quarter, confraternity, guild, and, of course, the city itself. Mediating these identities were the cults of saints, who were patrons of institutions and people. The relationship between patron […]
Known for novels such as Santa Evita and The Perón Novel (La Novela de Perón) and winner of awards such as the 2003 Rodolfo Walsh Award for his career in journalism, and the 2002 Alfaguara Prize with El vuelo de la Reina (‘The Flight of the Queen’), Tomás Eloy Martínez was also one of eighteen […]
On the 2nd of August this year (2005), football fans from the Sicilian city of Messina blockaded the strategic ferry route between the city and the Italian peninsula, protesting against their club’s relegation to Serie B. Another small episode in a long history of impassioned football support, and political intrigue (the Sicilian club were re-admitted […]
Is the Novel dead? Can it survive in an age where other forms of entertainment and information readily seem to fill its shoes? When DVD players are small and portable enough to challenge the convenience of a paperback, is the novel doomed? “I’ve never been very good at either privileging art forms or declaring any […]
Denis Brutus, born in 1924 in what was then British Rhodesia to South African parents, shot to prominence (and jail) in the 1960s campaigning for a boycott of South Africa in the sporting world. A veteran activist, poet and Professor of African Studies and African Literature, Brutus continues to campaign vigorously against economic injustice. His […]
Firing questions at anyone for a half an hour about their motivations and identity is bound to produce contradictions, but an interview with Glen Hansard, chief songwriter from Irish band the Frames, throws up more than its fair share. It’s not that he’s confused, or indeed confusing. Rather, the context that he and The Frames […]
