FRANKFURT: The Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest, is going ahead this week even after a spike in coronavirus infections turned the German city into a high-risk area. With authors signing books behind plexiglass, audiences wearing masks and industry events moved online, this year's edition is unlike any other. The rapidly worsening outbreak, in a country that has so far coped relatively well with the pandemic, forced organisers to rewrite their plans several times. Just 48 hours before Wednesday's kickoff, fair director Juergen Boos and his team decided to ban audiences from attending readings and interviews in a concert hall that had been due to host 450 people at a time. "We had to react right away, " Boos told AFP, after Frankfurt was coloured red on the coronavirus map. It was a huge blow to a fair that last year drew 300, 000 visitors and has already been drastically scaled back. The on-stage author talks at the now eerily empty Festhalle arena are still taking place however and are being live-streamed.
The television adaptation on Hulu starring Elisabeth Moss generated yet more commentary, and women dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets, as the handmaids were depicted in the book and TV series, have shown up at political demonstrations. ``You're not there yet, or else you wouldn't be talking to me, '' Atwood said to a male Associated Press reporter, laughing over the phone. ``You'd probably be in an isolation prison or something or dead.... How dare you talk to a female person over the phone and write about them? ``... And if I were a betting person, which naturally I kind of am, I would bet on American orneriness and refusal to line up, '' she added. ``So I don't think you're going to get people marching in lockstep easily.... You could get it, but it would be hard. '' Atwood also thinks people are ``alert to the dangers'' of undermining the U. constitution. ``That is what stands between you and an absolutist dictatorship, '' she said. Sharon Rab, the founder and chairwoman of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, praised Atwood for popular success with writing that also educates people about pressing social justice and environmental issues.
"But we must be able to have these personal encounters. " At Walden cafe on Wednesday evening, retired teacher Christiane Decker-Eisel, 67, queued patiently for German novelist Bov Bjerg, seated behind a large plexiglass screen, to sign her book. "I'm interested in his work and really wanted to be here, " she told AFP. "I feel protected with my FFP2 mask on. " Being forced to switch to a mainly digital fair has its upsides, Boos said, allowing for larger audiences and attracting speakers who might never have come to Frankfurt. More than 4, 400 exhibitors from over 100 countries have registered to take part virtually. For members of the public, this week's live-stream highlights include interviews with Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong, US whistleblower Edward Snowden and legendary author Margaret Atwood of "The Handmaid's Tale" fame, whose native Canada postponed its role as guest of honour at this year's fair to 2021. But Boos said nothing could replace the physical fair with its "creativity, chance encounters and a little bit of chaos".
Iraqi political analyst Muhammad Sadeq Al-Hashemi said in a February 26, 2020 interview on Al-Ayam TV (Iraq) that in the 1981 thriller novel titled The Eyes of Darkness, American author Dean Koontz had written about the coronavirus. Al-Hashemi argued that this proves that coronavirus is an American plot and he said that the goal of the plot is to reduce the world's population. He said that in the past 10 years, two patents have been filed in the United States for the development of virus strains with the name "corona" and he compared this American "conspiracy" to when the Jews used blankets infected with anthrax to wipe out 86% of the native population in what is today the United States in order to have a real Jewish homeland. He said that the Zionist lobby similarly cleansed one third of the population of Scotland and that the Rothschild family has a monopoly of laboratories that develop biological and nuclear weapons. Al-Hashemi added that the Rothschilds had been the ones who decided to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
"If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you'd find solidarity and kinship, " she wrote. "I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will ave spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments or blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker, " the author said. Rowling said her decision to mention these details was not an attempt to garner sympathy but out of solidarity with the huge number of women with similar history, "who've been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces". Predictive Text: 'Frankenstein', '1984' And Other Books That Foretold The Future Into The Future A look back at the different times when authors unleashed the Nostradamus in them and came up with something that was years ahead of its time.
Ambrish Kumar, Founder of LogYcode, likes to utilise his free time reading. The logistic company boss is currently reading, ' Creating Unstoppable Self-Confidence ' by Tony Robbins. The entrepreneur believes people should always keep themselves motivated. "There should be something inspirational you should look forward to, " he told ET Panache. He has five books on his must-read list - Five books on his must read list are 'India Wins Freedom' by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell, 'The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties' by Paul Collier, 'Get the Life You Want: The Secrets to Quick and Lasting Life Change with Neuro-Linguistic Programming' by Richard Bandler, 'An Autobiography: The Story Of My Experiments With Truth' by Mahatma Gandhi, and 'Freedom at Midnight' by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. Kumar enjoys reading the works of Premchand too and calls them his guilty pleasure read. "I get completely involved in the plot and story written by Premchand, and forget myself.
Transwomen are women. I see and love you. " Rowling sparked a debate with her series of tweets on Saturday where she argued that discussion of gender identity invalidates biological sex. "If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth, " Rowling wrote. "The idea that women like me, who've been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they're vulnerable in the same way as women — ie, to male violence — 'hate' trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences — is a nonsense, " she wrote. The author's comments led to an uproar in Hollywood and among her fans and queer activists have denounced her comments as anti-trans. Rowling on Wednesday wrote an essay clarifying her tweets while coming out as a sexual assault survivor.
I think it's people who are realistic but inclined towards optimism who actually try to change direction. '' Atwood published her first book of poetry, ``Double Persephone, '' in 1961, and her other books have included ``Cat's Eye'' (1988), ``Alias Grace'' (1996), ``The Blind Assassin'' (2000), and ``The MaddAddam Trilogy'' (2003-2013). ``The Testaments, '' her 2019 sequel to ``The Handmaid's Tale, '' quickly joined her bestsellers. The Dayton lifetime achievement award carries a $10, 000 prize. Previous winners include Studs Terkel, Taylor Branch, John Irving, Gloria Steinem and Elie Wiesel. The awards gathering originally planned for October is being rescheduled for spring 2021 because of pandemic precautions. Atwood will be joined by the 2020 winners of awards for fiction and nonfiction; finalists for those will be announced next month. Predictive Text: 'Frankenstein', '1984' And Other Books That Foretold The Future Into The Future A look back at the different times when authors unleashed the Nostradamus in them and came up with something that was years ahead of its time.
``Margaret Atwood continues to remind us that `It can't happen here' cannot be depended upon; anything can happen anywhere given the right circumstances, and right now, with scorn for democratic institutions on the rise, her lessons are more vital than ever, `` Rab told The AP by email. While not all books are conducive to peace and understanding, Atwood said, fiction can help people ``learn what it is to be a person different from ourselves, so that might cause you to have more empathy with people who aren't exactly like you. '' The Toronto resident's longtime partner, novelist Graeme Gibson, died at age 85 a year ago this month. Atwood, 80, said she tried to keep herself busily distracted after the loss, doing book promotions and other travel until the pandemic grounded her in March. She has since signed thousands of inserts and bookplates to support independent booksellers, and has given talks via Zoom. She considers herself ``a realist, but on the optimistic side, because if you're pessimistic, you don't do anything....
Finally, he selected a work in which a bird is seen bringing some food for its baby amid strong winds threatening to blow away its nest. "For me, that is the true meaning of peace. When your heart is full of joy, when you are capable of having a family and fighting for it, it doesn't matter what is going on around you, because with peace you have overcome all difficulties, " the king told his subjects. — Paulo Coelho (@paulocoelho) 1579788969000 The painting then travelled to many other kingdoms. Coelho was born in 1947 in the city of Rio De Janerio. He has been the United Nations Messenger of Peace, since 2007 and it has allowed him to promote the intercultural dialogue and to focus on the needs of the children. His books "The Spy", "Adultery", "Inspirations" and the most-recent "Hippie" have been published by Penguin. Predictive Text: 'Frankenstein', '1984' And Other Books That Foretold The Future Into The Future A look back at the different times when authors unleashed the Nostradamus in them and came up with something that was years ahead of its time.