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Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and anti-apartheid leader, is in critical condition in a hospital in Pretoria where he was admitted two weeks ago with a recurring respiratory infection.

A statement from South African President Jacob Zuma said the 94-year-old Mandela's condition had become critical over the past 24 hours.

"The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well-looked after and is comfortable. He is in good hands," said Zuma, referring to Mandela by his clan name.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports that Zuma has also met with Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, to discuss his health.

Mandela, a Noble Peace Prize laureate, was rushed to the hospital on June 8, but was reportedly stranded for 40 minutes en route after his ambulance broke down.

On Saturday, Zuma's office confirmed that an ambulance that transported Mandela had been disabled. Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj said Mandela was transferred to another military ambulance for the remainder of the journey between Johannesburg and the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria.

He did not say how long the trip to the hospital took, but said "all care" was taken to ensure that Mandela's medical condition was not compromised.

Mandela's lung problems date from his long imprisonment at Robben Island near Cape Town, where he spent 27 years for his anti-apartheid activities before being released in 1990.

In 1994, Mandela became South Africa's first black president.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

A recently released FBI file calls legendary Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes a "communist writer" and refers to a "long history of subversive connections." The dossier, which starts in the 1960s and spans decades, also reveals that the FBI had informants track his movements while in the U.S., and details the agency's attempts to delay and deny his visa applications. Asked whether Fuentes, who died last year, was a communist, his biographer and former colleague Julio Ortega told NPR via email: "Not at all! He was critical of Communism, and a close friend and supporte[r] of [Milan] Kundera [a writer whose works were banned in communist Czechoslovakia] in difficult times for him. It is true that Fuentes supported the Cuban revolution as well as the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, but because both were rooted in Latin American history of utopian will and emancipatory ideals." Fuentes became a vocal critic of Fidel Castro after the poet Heberto Padilla was arrested in Cuba, and he once called the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez a "tropical Mussolini." Fuentes was no less harsh toward the U.S. — he once turned down a teaching position at Columbia University in protest of American air attacks in Vietnam, writing that it would be "impossible to talk serenely about literature while American imperialists murder women and children." But in a 2006 interview, Fuentes said, "To call me anti-American is a stupendous lie, a calumny. I grew up in this country. When I was a little boy I shook the hand of Franklin Roosevelt, and I haven't washed it since."

Daniel Handler, the grown-up alter-ego of Lemony Snicket, speaks with NPR's Neal Conan about his latest book, The Dark: "I can't think of a story that doesn't have something terrible in it, otherwise it's dull."

Seven writers, including Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes and Will Self, reflect on failure for The Guardian. Self writes, "[T]o continue writing is to accept failure as simply a part of the experience — it's often said that all political lives end in failure, but all writing ones begin there, endure there, and then collapse into senescent incoherence."

The literary critic Terry Castle writes about Sylvia Plath for The New York Review of Books: "I find her tasteless, grisly — unbearable, in fact — precisely because, even five decades after her suicide, she and her corpse-infested verses hold on with such ghoulish tenacity. She seems never to tire of creating tragic inhuman mischief from beyond the grave."

The Best Books Coming Out This Week:

A.S.A Harrison's The Silent Wife is a clean, understated thriller about a philandering husband and his murderous wife. The suspense comes not from twists and turns — you find out on page 2 that the placid, WASPy wife becomes a killer — but from the quiet force of her writing.

Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine was written by a psychoanalyst and a philosophy professor (who also happen to be married to each other). Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster take on the writings of Nietzsche, Lacan and other thinkers on Hamlet in this thoughtful, elegant work of criticism.

(This story was last updated at 10:40 a.m. ET)

Armed assailants attacked a hotel at a Himalayan base camp in Pakistan, gunning down nine foreign climbers and a local guide as the group prepared for an ascent of one of the world's tallest peaks.

NPR's Philip Reeves reports that Ukrainians and Chinese climbers, as well as a Pakistani guide, were killed in the attack at 26,246-foot Nanga Parbat, about 150 miles northeast of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

Some reports said a Russian climber was also among those killed. Another report said a Chinese climber managed to escape.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which he said was in retaliation for American drone strikes in the tribal belt of the country's west, according to The New York Times.

Philip says that the militants were reportedly wearing police uniforms when they stormed into the hotel, after finding it with the help of a local guide, whom they'd abducted. They shot dead a second guide.

The Times says the attack "occurred in far-flung Gilgit-Baltistan, a beautiful, mountainous part of northern Pakistan where attacks on foreigners have been rare in recent years, although there has been sporadic sectarian violence."

Reuters quotes a senior official from the Gilgit-Baltistan region as saying that "the gunmen held the staff hostage and then started killing foreign tourists and made their escape."

The news agency says it's the first time foreign tourists have been attacked in Gilgit-Baltistan, "where the convergence of the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan ranges has created a stunning landscape explored by only a trickle of the most intrepid mountaineers."

According to The Times:

"... the incident is likely to badly damage what remains of the country's tourism sector. Until now, mountaineers were considered one of the few groups that remained impervious to the perceived perils of visiting Pakistan. ... Sunday's unprecedented attack introduced a new element of risk that is likely to affect such expeditions, at least in the short term."

Malaysia has declared a state of emergency in the country's south after choking smog from slash-and-burn agriculture in neighboring Indonesia enveloped the region.

Residents in Muar and Ledang districts of Johor state have been told to stay indoors. This comes after a similar order in Singapore last week.

Smog from Indonesia is a perennial problem in Malaysia and Singapore, but the pollution levels this year have hit record levels. The fires in Indonesia are set by palm oil producers clearing jungle for new planting.

Malaysian officials on Sunday said the Pollution Standards Index in Muar and Ledang had topped 700, more than twice the 300 level considered dangerous.

It's gotten to the point the smog has become a political and diplomatic issue, straining relations between Indonesia and its neighbors.

The BBC says:

"Schools in the region have been ordered to remain closed. Local authorities have distributed face masks to residents.

Even in Kuala Lumpur, where smog levels have so far remained moderate, visibility is now strongly reduced and the smell of thick smoke hangs in the air, correspondents say.

Kuala Lumpur resident Raj Ahmed told the BBC: 'You wake up in the morning and you can smell burnt wood - you look out the window and there is constant smog clouding the major landmarks that you would ordinarily see.

'If you go outside, it's like constantly standing close to a small barbecue.'"