Nobel lectures : from the literature laureates, 1986 to 2006.

Originally published: Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 2006.

My father's suitcase / Orhan Pamuk -- Art, truth and politics / Harold Pinter -- Sidelined / Elfriede Jelinek -- He and his man / J.M. Coetzee -- Heureka! / Imre Kertâesz -- Two worlds / V.S. Naipaul -- The case for literature / Gao Xingjian -- To be continued ... / Gèunter Grass -- How characters became the masters and the author their apprentice / Josâe Saramago -- Contra jogulatores obloquentes (Against jesters who defame and insult) / Dario Fo -- The poet and the world / Wislawa Szymborska -- Crediting poetry / Seamus Heaney -- Japan, the ambiguous, and myself / Kenzaburo Oe -- The bird is in your hands / Toni Morrison -- The Antilles: fragments of epic memory / Derek Walcott -- Writing and being / Nadine Gordimer -- In search of the present / Octavio Paz -- Eulogy to the fable / Camilo Josâe Cela -- Mankind's coming of age / Naguib Mahfouz -- Aesthetics and language / Joseph Brodsky -- This past must address its present / Wole Soyinka -- Laureates, 1901 to 2006.

This is a collection in which meditations on imagination and the process of writing mingle with keen discussions of global affairs, geography and colonialism, cultural change, and the deeply lasting influences of the past.