John Ralston Saul

(Canada, 1947) has been president of PEN International since 2009. Time magazine called him "a prophet," and he is seen as one of the great thinkers of our time. In 2005 he predicted the global economic crisis in The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World. Saul has written 14 books that have been translated into 25 languages. He is internationally renowned for his philosophical trilogy Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, and The Unconscious Civilization. For Penguin Canada he produced a series of 18 biographies about Canadian historical figures, written by well-known Canadian writers. Saul made his debut as a novelist in 1977, and in the 1980s a thriller and an adventure story by him were published in Dutch. He has been active with PEN Canada since 1990. He is also the founder of The Institute for Canadian Citizenship, which helps newcomers integrate into Canadian society.