Paul Beatty for "The Sellout" sounds like a relevant story for our times. It's playful, uses deep thought and seems to be taking advantage of everything literature can do when tackling difficult issues.

What literature brings to our times is always the fact that literature refuses to bring any simple or easy answers.

All authors secretly hope that their works will be read in 100 years' time and 200 years, and that they will somehow survive into the future.

Literature acknowledges that life is complicated.

A great number of tourists have been flocking Iceland and those numbers are growing every year. That also raises questions like "How do we receive people?" and "How do we present our country?"

I followed the launch of the library with Margaret Atwood and then David Mitchell. I just sat quietly at home secretly envying them. Then just over a month ago she asked me if I would like to be the third author to join the library.

[ Bob Dylan] should let the Nobel Prize Committee know if he is accepting it or not. He will not be the first one who declines the prize for political or personal reasons. He should just tell them.