The Paris Review

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Harry Mathews on “the idiotic thing that aspiring young writers are usually told: write about yourself. Don't imitate literary models. Of course, imitating literary models is the best thing one can do.”

Jorge Semprún on the art of fiction: “when I got back from Buchenwald in 1945, I did want to write. I longed for it, to be honest, but strangely enough I found it impossible.”

Ryszard Kapuściński travels through Africa: “In the afternoon the shadows lengthen, start to overlap, then darken and finally turn to black. . . . People come alive then . . . they greet one another, converse, clearly happy that they have somehow managed to endure the quotidian cataclysm.”

Plus a new story by Benjamin Percy, debut fiction by Karl Taro Greenfeld, and the spring poetry folio.