Freedom rang out earlier this week at a literary evening of “Banned Voices,” sponsored by PEN American Center’s New York Festival of International Literature. The evening demonstrated that freedom to speak and write is a precious commodity. Larry Siems, director of Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center told The New York Sun, “For us, this event showcases what PEN does day in and day out: try to restore voices to writers who are being silenced.”

The evening was held at KGB bar, whose decor – including a red flag with hammer and sickle, a reminder of Soviet authoritarianism – served as backdrop for a program focusing on freedom.

Canadian author Margaret Atwood read from the work of Egyptian fiction writer Nawal el Saadawi, who has been banned in the latter’s country. Wole Soyinka read from Algerian writer Tahar Djaout’s posthumous work, “The Last Summer of Reason.” Djaout was murdered on May 26, 1993. Anouar Benmalek, a founder of the Algerian Committee Against Torture, read the following poem by Djaout:

Silence is death
And you, if you speak, you die
If you are silent, you die
So speak and die

Mr. Benmalek also read work by Algerian writer Said Mekbel, who was murdered in 1994.

Rick Moody read an essay titled “After You, God” by Cuban poet and journalist Raul Rivero, who was one of 75 dissidents, writers, and intellectuals arrested in the country in March 2003. The piece describes the attempt by three men in 1995 to swim around the Cuban guard outpost to reach the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, in hopes of gaining political asylum.

Paris-born Antoine Audouard read from work by Duong Thu Huong, a Vietnamese novelist. Iranian-born novelist Shahrnush Parsipur read from her own work. She was arrested by the Shah’s intelligence agency, and, following the 1979 Revolution, also arrested by the Islamic Republic. Her work is banned in Iran.

In the audience were author and ethnologist of Cambodia, Francois Bizot, who teaches the history of Buddhism at the Sorbonne; Peter Wong, a reporter for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore.; Paul Catafago, the executive director of Movement One, a not-for-profit arts organization based in Queens.

One particularly passionate performer was poet and calligrapher writer Huang Xiang who was imprisoned and tortured in Red China for his free-spirited verse and advocacy of human rights. He fled that country and resides in Pittsburgh as part of the North American Network of Cities of Asylum.

He read a poem that began “You look like a big docile sea-turtle, oh China,” written in 1976, and “Wild Beasts” composed in 1968:

I am a wild beast hunted down
I am a captured wild beast
I am a wild beast trampled by wild beasts
I am a wild beast trampling wild beasts
This age viciously seizes me
With squinting eyes
Its feet stomp on the bridge of my nose
Tearing
Biting
Gnawing
Gnawing until barely a bone of me is left
Even though barely a bone is left
I want this detestable age to choke on me.

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NYU NIGHT

“Africa has to ask itself many questions,” said Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who directs the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California-Irvine. Mr. Thiong’o was among the speakers on Tuesday evening at New York University where PEN American Center’s New York Festival of International Literature was hosting an evening devoted to “Africa and the World: The Writer’s Role.”

Mr. Thiong’o’s next novel is called “Wizard of the Crow” (Pantheon), coming out in the spring. On Tuesday he discussed his novel “Petals of Blood” (Penguin), in which a strike takes place at a school and an expelled student becomes legendary in the school’s folklore. A generation later another strike occurs in which the students “want their own country to be at the center of knowledge.”

This time the headmaster, Cambridge Fraudsham, who has run the school in a militaristic fashion, is forced to resign and the legendary figure who was formerly expelled is asked to come back to run the school. He enters the auditorium, quotes Shakespeare, and invokes the old order of things. Mr. Thiong’o described him as “a black replica of the previous headmaster” – a perfect image of post-colonial Africa that does not listen to itself or harness the power within itself.

Mr. Thiong’o said that, if one looks at Africa on a world map, its shape resembles a question mark. The continent, he said, looks as though it is carrying all of Europe on its head. Africa must find a way to not carrying Europe on its head, he said.

Other speakers that evening included Yale University Professor Elizabeth Alexander, who discussed Africa and the African-American experience. Her book “American Sublime” (Graywolf) is scheduled to come out in October. Uwe Timm discussed how contemporary interest in Africa has really diminished: “Once again,” he said, “the continent becomes invisible.”

Also speaking was writer, painter, and activist Breyten Breytenbach, who lives on Goree Island, Dakar, and spends part of the year in New York, where he teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University. He has finished the first two parts of a trilogy to be called “The Middle World.” The first part consists of notes and essays on writing, the second is a volume of essays about the world and involves issues such as identity; the third part will be a novel using travel writing as its background.