From the Guardian

Shock appearance by award winner

History was made at the Freedom to Write awards last week when, for the first time in the contest's history, the winner turned up. Novelist and dissident Rakhim Esenov made a surprise appearance at the New York ceremony following a week of intense diplomatic negotiations prompted by the award sponsors, writers' organisation PEN America.

Esenov, 78, had been under house arrest in Turkmenistan since 2004, when he was charged with smuggling 800 copies of his banned novel, The Crowned Wanderer, into the country.

The Freedom to Write awards honour international literary figures who have been persecuted for defending or simply exercising their right to free expression. As such, the vast majority of winners are behind bars or in hiding when their names are announced.

According to PEN, Esenov was accused of inciting ethnic and religious hatred because his novel portrayed the 16th-century Turkmen hero Bayram Khan as a Shia rather than a Sunni Muslim. After receiving his award, Esenov flew to Moscow to undergo medical treatment. He is expected to return to Turkmenistan.

"The hope is that he will not go back into house arrest," says Larry Siems, PEN's director. "Our assumption is that this means he has been restored his full rights to travel."

Yeah, you can forget sometimes how good we've got it really. I have complete admiration for writers who carry on in the face of persecution, imprisonment, torture or worse, because I know I wouldn't have the courage to do it. I saw a PEN writing event a couple of years ago at the Edinburgh festival and it was amazing - just hearing what some of those writers had been put through for just telling the truth.

Over here, we have a tendency to reckon we're suffering for our art if we have to either squeeze it in around a full time job or eat beans on toast for a while