About Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi is a novelist and writer. She is deputy president of English PEN and chair of its Free Expression is No Offence.
Articles by Lisa Appignanesi
The heart of Simone de Beauvoir
“Who actually was Simone de Beauvoir?” is something I’ve been asked several times since the publication of my book. I’ve taken to responding that de Beauvoir and her partner Jean-Paul Sartre were the Bob Geldof and Bono of France in the post-second-world-war years.
Like these rock singers and global ethical campaigners, de Beauvoir and Sartre acted as triggers of the public and political conscience. They spoke out. They ranted (though with impeccable logic). They mounted platforms and television programmes. They had their pictures taken with Fidel Castro and many other heads of state. They drank and smoked and engaged in a variety of couplings, and all the while they were passionate about the need for freedom from moralising cant and pious humbug – whether of the state or church variety.
Salman Rushdie's honour
The award of a knighthood to the novelist Salman Rushdie, announced in Queen Elizabeth II's "birthday honours" list on 15 June 2007, has been followed by a media-fuelled flurry of formulaic controversy. There is something very familiar about the vehement denunciation from voices inside Britain as well as Iran and Pakistan that has followed, and not just to those who remember when his name and work first began to be seen through a political rather than literary lens.
A law to close minds
The proposed British law against hatred on religious grounds will be used as a weapon of censorship, says Lisa Appignanesi.
This week's editor
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James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do
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