International Affairs

Leslie Savan, who writes about advertising for the Village Voice, looks at Pepsi's newest ad campaign in the USSR, and reflects on the relationship between Russian culture and American corporatism.

Hernando de Soto says that the inefficient and often corrupt bureaucratic system in Peru makes starting a legal business nearly impossible for most people. As a result, a robust, informal, and technically-illegal market has emerged. De Soto explores this phenomenon -- and similar cases throughout Latin America -- in his new book, The Other Path.

Writer Eva Hoffman moved with her family from Poland to the Canada when she was thirteen. Her new book about assimilating into the culture of her new country is called Lost in Translation. Hoffman is also an editor for the New York Times Book Review.

Janet Levine is a white, liberal South African woman and anti-apartheid activist. She later resigned from public office and exiled herself in the United States; she believed that whites' unavoidable complicity with racist policies undermined the efforts of black activists. Her memoir new memoir is called Inside Apartheid.

Jane Kramer regularly writes about the culture and politics on the continent. She says immigration -- and the xenophobic response to immigrants -- has played a big part in shaping Europe's changing identity.

New Yorker staff writer Alex Shoumatoff has a new book of essays called African Madness, about his travels throughout the continent. He joins Fresh Air to talk about the brutal reign of Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic, Dian Fossey's blind spots regarding the human populations near gorilla habitats, and the spread of AIDS.

Healey's organization works on behalf of prisoners of conscience around the world. His latest strategy to raise awareness for this issue is to stage rock concerts featuring politically-minded performers like Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Stevie Wonder. Healey was a Catholic priest in the 1960s, but found he had more opportunities to pursue humanitarian work in the secular world.

Organized crime groups in China, called triads, have become some of the biggest forces in the international heroin trade. Writer Gerald Posner links their rise to the power vacuum left by the Sicilian mafia, as well as the policing policies of Chinatowns throughout the U.S. Posner's book about the subject is called Warlords of Crime.

Peter Sichrovsky's lives in Austria, and is the child of Holocaust survivors who grew up alongside the children of former Nazis. He is interested in how the generation after World War II dealt with their parents' experiences during this time, either as perpetrators or victims of violence. Sichrovsky's books include Strangers in Their Own Land and Born Guilty.

Kevin Boyle's group Article 19, name after the United Nations provision protecting free speech, fights against censorship around the world, both in democracies and dictatorships.

James Fenton is a poet who traveled to Southeast Asia without any clear goal in mind. He started writing first-person journalism for a number of newspapers and magazines. Fenton covered the fall of Saigon and the end of the Marcos regime in the Philippines.

New Yorker writer William Finnegan followed back journalists in South Africa who worked for a liberal, opposition newspapers. Finnegan is white, and his presence often put the people he traveled with in danger. His book about the reporters is called Dateline Soweto.

Writer William Shawcross's new book profiles the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown during the Iranian revolution. Despite his despotic rule -- including the brutal deployment of the SAVAK secret police -- the Shah advanced some reforms in education and women's rights. He was an ally to the United States; who provided the Iranian state with money for weapons.

The Israeli author's new novel is about a man descended from both a Jewish Holocaust survivor and a Palestinian aristocrat. While Kaniuk fought for the Israeli War for Independence, he also signed -- along with other Israeli and Arab intellectuals and artists -- an agreement advocating for Palestinian independence.

Writer Fouad Ajami joins Fresh Air to talk about Beirut, and how it attracted Lebanese who lived in the countryside. The civil war in Lebanon, Ajami says, has led to a collapse of the country's cultural and religious pluralism, which is born out in several internecine conflicts.

National security correspondent Roy Gutman takes a look at the tense relations between the United States and Nicaragua, in light of the conflict between the Contras and Sandinistas. His new book about the topic is called Banana Diplomacy.

Writer Orville Schell. His latest book, Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform, chronicles one year in China's rush toward Democracy, and the country's continuing love-hate relationship with the West. Schell's work appears regularly in The New Yorker.

Book critic John Leonard reviews the novel Children of the Arbat, by the Russian writer Anatoly Rybakov.

Exiled South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. In the 60's, Masekela was probably best known for his instrumental hit, "Grazing In The Grass." More recently, Masekela performed with Paul Simon during his the Graceland tour.

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. Achebe is one of Africa's foremost writers. His earlier works include Things Fall Apart, A Man of the People and Arrow of God. His latest work, his first novel in 25 years, is titled Anthills of the Savannah.