August 9, 2013 Windows on the World Andri Snær Magnason, Reykjavik, Iceland By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. This is my window. Or my windows—the view from my living room, where I sit and write. Might not seem very inspiring. I wish I could offer green mossy lava, roaring waves, a glacier mountain top. I do have other spaces—in an abandoned powerstation, a favorite fisherman’s cafe by the harbor, a summer house on the arctic circle—but this is my honest view, what I really see most of the days. This house was built in the 1960s when people were fed up with lava and mountains; they were migrating to the growing suburbs to create a new view for themselves. The young couple who dug the foundation with their own hands dreamed of a proper garden on this barren, rocky strip of land. They dreamed of trees, flowers, shelter from the cold northern breeze. What is special depends on where you are, and here, the trees are actually special. They were planted fifty years ago like summer flowers, not expected to live or grow more than a meter. The rhododendron was considered a miracle, not something that could survive a winter. It looks tropical, with Hawaiian-looking pink flowers; Skúli, the man who built the house and sold it to me half a century later, took special pride in it. I am not a great gardener. We are thinking of buying an apple tree, though they don’t really thrive in this climate. I would plant it like a flower, not really expect it to grow, and hope for a miracle. —Andri Snær Magnason
July 12, 2013 Windows on the World Rebecca Walker, Maui, Hawaii By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. I have been looking out this window for three years. I have stared out of these rectangular panes full of hope and also despair, giddy with inspiration to connect and overtaken with a throbbing desire to disengage. I suppose this is what writing is to me: gripping the rope that swings between reaching out and pulling in. But whatever my mood, I always love the light beyond this window. I love the quiet. I love my two empty chairs, sentinels awaiting their visitors, open to the promise of more. I feel at home in this spot, on this road to the small village of Hana, on this tiny piece of rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I love the rain that pours down, thunderous and crashing, before sunshine, harsh and stunning, pierces through once again. —Rebecca Walker
June 7, 2013 Windows on the World Tatiana Salem Levy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Although I have an office in my apartment, every day I wake up and take my laptop to the dining room table. The view from my dining room has an amplitude that takes me away, and when I write I need the feeling that space and time have no end. I can’t stand writing in enclosed places, nor having just an hour to work. When I sit at the table, the morning is still quiet; I hear one or another child leaving for school and the birds that often come to visit me at the window. That’s when I write best, inspired by the imbalance and the irregularity of the buildings in front of me. Then, throughout the day, inspiration will fail. I get up and lean on the window to see what I can’t see while seated: a huge mountain to the right with a statue of Christ on top. In silence, I start talking to the man with open arms until my thoughts get lost and I decide to go back to the chair. And so my days elapse, between the table and the window. —Tatiana Salem Levy
May 3, 2013 Windows on the World Andrea Hirata, Jakarta, Indonesia By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Since my childhood, I have rarely had the power to control where I can be. Life has not given me many choices. But after writing my first novel, I started thinking of leaving my place of employment, where I worked for almost twelve years. Though writing is a very risky way of making a living in Indonesia, I finally resigned from my job, and now I’ve got this strange feeling of relief. The decision to write full-time meant I couldn’t afford to buy a house. A friend kindly offered me the use of his apartment in a thirty-six–story building full of newlywed couples in the southern area of Jakarta. I didn’t like my working space at first, but the scenery and everything going on outside have worked their magic on me. From a building right in front of my windows, I can observe the speed of the sunrises and sunsets. The voices of children playing, laughing, yelling, and crying on the playground crawl up to the eighth floor, where I write. Their voices sound so innocent from a distance. —Andrea Hirata
April 5, 2013 Windows on the World Alejandro Zambra, Santiago, Chile By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. I’m not sure that my little studio is the best place in the house to write. It’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter. But I like this window. I like those trees crossed by power lines and that slice of available sky. The silence is never absolute, or maybe it is—maybe my idea of silence now includes the constant barking of dogs and the uneven roar of motors. I take enormous pleasure in watching passersby, the odd cyclist, the cars. When the writing isn’t happening I just sit there, absorbing the scenery, adoring it. I’m sure those minutes, those apparently lost hours, are useful in some way, that they’re essential for writing: that my books would be very different if I had written them in another room, looking out another window. —Alejandro Zambra Translated from the Spanish by Harry Backlund.
March 1, 2013 Windows on the World G. Mend-Ooyo, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia By Matteo Pericoli A series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. When I was young, every morning I would take our hobbled horse and walk it in the dawn light. My father would say, “Sleep late like a horse. Rise early like a bird.” As I walked with the horse, I was very happy to have the little birds fly just above the light of dawn as they sang. The rhythm of each morning of my life still moves to the beat of my lovely childhood. From the window of my home in the center of Ulaanbaatar, I grasp the pale light in the east. Just as I used to bring in the horses pastured on the wild steppe, I spend time recollecting in my mind many thoughts that have taken flight. The images of life, transected by the window, are a chiaroscuro. I can clearly see the great seat of learning that is the National University of Mongolia. Sometimes it seems to be an image hanging on walls. A few steps from the window is my writing desk, made from Mongolian pine wood. When I sit at the desk, the world shifts into a different space. The history books grow thicker. There is no time to watch what goes on beyond my window. —G. Mend-Ooyo