Thomas Meaney

I am grateful to Lea Ypi for her corrections concerning the funding for her scholarship in Italy in the 1990s, the details of her book launch and her receipt of the Lumo Skëndo prize (Letters, 7 July). But the main point stands. The post-communist memoir is, unavoidably, a political genre, and not simply an exercise in auto-fiction. While praising its wit, sharp prose and evocative descriptions,...

Thomas Meaney writes: Attwell is right about the Berlin passage. And Coetzee only cites his knowledge of ‘Asian reality’ as a ‘compositional aid’ for Waiting for the Barbarians, so I should have phrased that differently. But the Santiago setting is in the notes for The Burning of the Books: ‘The junta is clearing out the universities in Santiago.’ And there are many ‘pensées’ in the...