The Arches David Lightfoot • Photos and report from

• Photos and report from the Berlin international literature festival and its magnificent Focus Arab World in which more than 30 Arab authors participated

Paul Perry was born in Dublin in 1972

In the visual arts

• Excerpts from Lebanese author Alawiyya Sobh’s acclaimed new novel in which a middle-age woman takes a hard look at her love life and her present situation

they shape their lips to your name

The Arches David Lightfoot • Photos and report fromTwenty five surreal collages by John Digby, set in an ornate arch from the Alhambra, suggest a multiplicity of narratives and provide provocative starting points for poet Tony Curtis. Giraffes in slings, a toppling Statue of Liberty, woolly mammoths, an enthroned bull, a monster pear and giant apple, flying fishes, a crazed Noah all are among the many intriguing images to which the poet has responded in The Arches. Like the collages, his poems may ask