Page 11 - ELITE PLUS MAGAZINE VOL11
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Ramallah, Palestine, during the Palestine Literature festival.If you make a better road for yourself, it’s easier for others to follow and together we can influence the worldothers to follow and together we can influence the world.Do you take different approaches when writing novels and essays?We ruin the values we stand for in Europe if we let the people in need die in the Mediterranean when they come seeking our help. In Europe there is this value that you should take care of the poor, the needy and old human beings because we are all born equal, and you should treat others the way you want to be treated yourself. Things like that interest me. In my essays I also write about society, but more on the philosophical side. You could say that my essays are more political than the books.What if writers become extrem- ists?We actually talked about this in the forum. Writers can be extremistslike everyone else, and they are not better than others. In the war in the former Yugoslavia was a famous extremist, Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs behind the genocide. There you have an extremist writer. We as writers have to know that we have power when we use the pen, and we can choose to use it for the greater good or in the name of extremism. Is real literature extremist if you simply seek the truth? Whatever its form, whatever it’s about, what if you just want to seek something? But the moment you tell other people what they shall think, you go on a track of extremism.Elite+ 9