It's kind of cool that I know of all this great science fiction being written in China, and most of it is not really well-known in the West.
As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.
Anakana Schofield is part of a new wave of wonderful Irish fiction-international in scope and electrically alive.
The Australian Gerald Murnane, a genius on the level of Beckett, is known in Australia and Sweden but almost nowhere else. And I loved Reality Hunger, David Shields' recent novel take on the art of the novel.
The difficulty that many foreign authors face in having their works translated into English has effects far beyond the United States.
Some major American publishing houses still seek work by foreign writers.
A few of the world's most famous non-American novelists have large followings in the United States, among them Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Guenter Grass, who were both popular even before winning the Nobel.
I think one of the things the writers' festival does that is very good is that it brings writers from around the world and around the country and locally and puts them all in the one spot together, and that's what a lot of the world's great writers' festivals do.
