Marking Time Abdel Khaliq al-Rikabi a journalist from the BBC

a journalist from the BBC World Service and several biographers

The trouble is that we could say the same thing about living

• Woody Allen

Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi

This new critical study comprises interviews with the key players in this first generation of postcolonial playwrights

Marking Time Abdel Khaliq al-Rikabi a journalist from the BBCPewter Stapleton is drowning under a pile of marking. He teaches creative writing at a university in Sheffield, a campus peopled with malign cost cutting accountants, baffled security staff and colleagues cloning themselves. Pewter is a brilliant comic creation, an endless lister of tasks which are never quite completed, who is strung forever between seriousness and send up, a commitment to his writing and boundless cynicism about writers and the arts