No news, just reviews

Some of the more interesting book reviews and interviews I've read this weekend:

At SFGate, Carolina de Robertis reviews Sudden Fiction Latino, a comprehensive Norton anthology of flash fiction and microfiction from Latino writers throughout North, Central, and South America--from the internationally acclaimed Gabriel García Márquez to writers barely known in the United States, like Rodrigo Rey Rosa of Guatemala.

Robert McCrum of The Observer presents an amusing interview with Lorrie Moore, the American novelist and short story writer known for her brevity and tragicomic tone. Her latest novel, A Gate at the Stairs, offers a glimpse into the lives of Americans in the years between September 11 and the United States invasion of Iraq and has been longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Shabnam Minwalla of The Times of India provides some context for the latest Stieg Larsson craze, offering a biographical sketch of the best-selling, deceased, Swedish crime novelist and providing reviews of his Millennium Trilogy--The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

A Saudi Arabian novel about divorce, sexual oppression, and superstition during the first Gulf War has recently been translated by Anthony Calderbank and published by the American University Press. Munira's Bottle by Youssef al-Mohaimeed and its translation are reviewed by Amany Aly Shawky at AlMasryAlYoum.

William Skidelsky of The Observer details the life and works of David Mitchell, a young British novelist whose complex, experimental, diverse novels have become a bestselling, postmodern sensation.

Atwood urged to decline Israeli award

Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is slated to receive the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University in Israel on May 9. The prize committee awards three million dollars in the categories of "past, present, and future" to inspirational individuals of various fields who have made an outstanding impact on the world. Atwood would share one million dollars with Amitav Ghosh, an Indian-Bengali author who writes in English; past literary winners have included Amos Oz and Tom Stoppard, in addition to non-writers like environmental activist Al Gore, cellist Yo Yo Ma, and archeologist Graeme Barker.

Various people, including a contingency of students from the Gaza Strip known as the Palestinian Students' Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, have expressed their concern over Atwood's possible acceptance of an award from Israel due to the nation's apartheid-like treatment of Palestinian people. In letters that can be read here, they plead that she either boycott the ceremony, use the podium as an opportunity to condemn Israel's actions, or publicly use the winnings to contribute to causes such as writers' groups in the Gaza Strip.

Atwood's website, however, still lists that she plans to accept the award.

She will also be participating in an Earth Day panel called Arts of the Earth on April 25 in Washington, DC.

Award-winning author to be sued by publicity-seeking composer

Saudi Arabian novelist Abdo Khal, winner of the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the "Arabic Booker") on March 2, is to be sued by Egyptian composer Mohammad Raheem on grounds of libel.

Mohammad Raheem is also the name of a character in Khal's award-winning book She Throws Sparks, a composer who romances and mentors a prostitute in Jeddah. The real Raheem, who has composed music for several Arabic stars, has told Egyptian media that he requests the banning of Khal's book, the arrest of Khal, and the clearing of his name in the eyes of his family and associates.

Khal has insisted that the similarity of names and professions is coincidental and intended no harm. The name is, indeed, quite common.

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which is supported by the UK Booker Prize Foundation and funded by the Emirates Foundation of the UAE, carries with it a cash prize of $60,000. This year, its third, the prize committee attracted 113 nominations from seventeen countries. Winning the award promises not only financial security but also increased international recognition and accolades and future publication and translation deals.

According to The Tanjara:

The Administrator of the Prize, Joumana Haddad, commented: “The importance of the IPAF lies not only in its financial value, but in the social and cultural influence it has, the most important aspect of which is supporting high quality Arabic fiction and encouraging both writers and readers to consider writing and reading as vital acts."

Khal's book, whose full title is Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles (an allusion to a Quranic verse about Hell), should--as a result of the award--be published into English soon. A bitingly satirical look at the destructive power of wealth on life and the environment, the novel is unavailable in Khal's home country, where the criticisms allegedly strike too closely at the ruling elites.

Censorship in Iran

An interesting essay by Abbas Djavadi on rferl.org details forms of literary censorship in Iran, from the denial of publication of certain new works to the removal of old books from shelves to the excision and rewriting of precise offending phrases.

"Sometimes they reject the books and sometimes they refuse to publish specific passages, sentences, or even words," he continues. In a single history of Persian literature, they demanded 61 separate changes. One concerned a poem from the 11th century that was critical of men's beards. "They said the beard is something sacred and they can't approve anything making fun of it," the publisher says.

Djavadi also mentions two methods of circumventing these bawdlerizing efforts and censorial measures: publishing on the Internet and perusing the secret stashes of freethinking booksellers.

Literature of the Iranian Diaspora

In 1995, Shahriah Mandanipour and 22 other prominent Iranian writers were nearly killed when an assassination plot hatched by the government failed to send their bus plummeting into a ravine. Mandanipour now lives in the United States, where he is a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and his most recent novel, Censoring an Iranian Love Story, which was written in America but is set in Iran, has recently been translated into English by Sara Khalili. Censoring is Mandanipour's first novel to appear in English translation, and it represents one installment of an emerging trend of Iranian diaspora writers, who catalog their memories of post-revolution Iran from their new places of refuge.

The "renaissance" features first- and second-generation hyphenated Iranians, among them Marjane Satrapi of Persepolis fame; Laleh Khadivi, author of Age of Orphans; and Porochista Khakpour, who wrote the post-9/11 novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects, set amongst Iranian Americans in New York City.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story is a multi-layered tale featuring a writers attempt to compose a straightforward romance while repeatedly being censored by government officials and his own anxiety.

From the article by David Mattin of The National Newspaper of Abu Dhabi:

It’s easy to see why censorship is important to Mandanipour; back in Iran he was banned from publishing entirely between 1992 and 1997:

“Censorship is emotionally crushing for the writer,” he explains, “because it weakens the connection that he has with his readers. Readers become less trusting of the writer, because they know he is being censored.

“Eventually, censorship enters every part of the writer’s life; even the way that he thinks. The writer begins to censor himself.”

That strange dance of speech and silence, Mandanipour says, came to overshadow his writing life in Iran:

“I would write entire short stories on my computer, and then delete them. If my house was raided, those stories might be used as evidence against me.

“With Censoring an Iranian Love Story, I wanted to show how it is impossible for a writer to write a straightforward love story in Iran. That story will always become something else, more complex.”

But Censoring will also provide western readers with an insight into daily life as it is lived in Iran. In particular, we witness the ever looming presence of the Basij “morals police”, and the ingenuity that young Tehranis exercise to circumvent their rules. The Islamic Republic decrees that unmarried men and women should not socialise together: in one passage, Sara and Dara meet in a hospital waiting room, where all those around them are too busy to notice their illegal encounter.

“Just as it is impossible to write a straightforward Iranian love story, it is impossible to live one,” says Mandanipour. “Iranians no longer have the opportunity to have a romantic life, and that can destroy love.”

London and Qatar team up for literary salon

Bloomsbury Publishing and Qatar Publishing have united to form the Bloomsbury Qatar Literary Salon, a series of ongoing events to be held in London and Doha, Qatar, at which Arab writers will be given the opportunity to discuss their work.

The first event, last Thursday, featured British-Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, whose The Map of Love was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1999.

The second event, to be held in Doha on the first night of Ramadan Iftar, September 9, will feature readings by established and up-and-coming Arabian poets. Future events will follow approximately every two months.

The Palestine Festival of Literature

American author Claire Messud, whose 2006 The Emperor's Children was longlisted for a Man Booker Prize, has written a fascinating article for the Boston Globe about her recent visit to the Palestine Festival of Literature, a peaceful celebration of Palestinian letters held illegally in Jerusalem, where to use the word "Palestine" is a security risk and to be Palestinian is to be homeless, lost in time and space yet trapped in the void.

The author and lawyer Raja Shehadeh - a gentle man of Gandhi-esque demeanor, whose book “Palestinian Walks’’ won Britain’s Orwell Prize last year - led us on a walk in the hills outside Ramallah, to show us the land that he loves and upon which he has walked all his life. We scrambled up rocks among terraced olive groves to a stone shepherd’s hut, from which we could see the green and gold hills interlaced to the horizon. We picked our way along a dry riverbed, surprising a patterned tortoise, and on to a small village, where a mangy donkey gazed balefully from its tether and ruddy-faced children demonstrated their tree-climbing prowess.

So simple and beautiful, our walk was, alas, illegal: the olive groves of Raja Shehadeh’s childhood have been declared a militarized zone. We might have been arrested at any moment simply for standing in them. (Israeli settlers, however, are free to walk there; just as they are free to carry arms, and they do.) Part of being Palestinian is having your movements curtailed on every front.

What is a world where you cannot go for a walk, cannot assemble to read and discuss literature in public, cannot be certain of visiting your grandmother in a neighboring city? What is a world where you cannot lose your temper, cannot laugh in the wrong place?

Israeli poets become meteorologists

To celebrate the beginning of Hebrew Book Week on June 10, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz commissioned almost all of its reports from famous and emerging Israeli poets and novelists, from breaking news to the weather forecast.

From Quill and Quire:

The results were interesting, to say the least. The weather report appeared as a sonnet, penned by Roni Somek, and Eshkol Nevo’s television review began, “I didn’t watch TV yesterday.” Other articles were more sober, including novelist David Grossman’s account of a night spent at a drug rehab centre for children.

Curbside Press publishes Palestinian poetry

The Connecticut literary arts nonprofit Curbstone Press, whose mission statement involves "publishing creative literature that promotes human rights and inter-cultural understanding," specializing in "Latin American and Latino literature," has broadened its scope to release Rain Inside, a collection of poems by Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah.

The poems, translated by Omnia Amin and Rick London, capture life on the Gaza strip, often through surrealist and brutal imagery.

Two previous novels by Nasrallah have also been translated into English--Prairies of Fever and Inside the Night--though the majority of literature by him and his Arabic contemporaries remains unavailable in the Anglophone world.

Raymond Deane of the Electronic Intifada explores this dearth of Arabic translation and reviews the collection.

It is no accident that this sidelining has taken place in the Anglosphere, given the role of the US and UK in occupying Arab lands and propping up Israel. Imperialism/colonialism needs to demonize subject peoples as "uncivilized," a caricature that cannot be maintained without impeding access to those peoples' poetry. Providing such access is therefore a quietly subversive act.

London parks administration commissions Kuwaiti love story

As part of the Park Stories project administered by the Royal Parks agency in London, which supervises the eight official parks in the city, a story by Lebanese author Hanan Al-Shaykh about Kensington Gardens has been published in a bilingual edition with an English translation by Christina Phillips alongside the original Arabic.

Entitled Saaloon Tajmeel Lil-Baja ("A Beauty Parlor for Swans"), the story follows the secret marriage between a young Kuwaiti girl and her Lebanese lover, both of them now living in London.

Of the eight fictional stories in the series (each set in a different park), "A Beauty Parlor for Swans" is the only story written by a non-native. The daughter of a strict Shi'a Muslim family, Al-Shaykh left Beirut at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, lived in Saudi Arabia for a time, and now resides in London with her husband. She writes frequently of Arab women's issues, and six of her novels have been translated into English since 1992.

From the Saudi Gazette:

Al-Shaykh is one of the few Arab fiction writers to portray the lives of Arab émigrés in London. Her novel “Only in London” focuses on Arabs in London and much of the action takes place in the Kensington Gardens-Hyde Park-Edgware Road area. The English translation was published in 2002 by London publisher Bloomsbury, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Al-Shaykh’s novels and stories have been translated into some 16 languages. Her works in English translation include the novels “The Story of Zahra”, “Women of Sand and Myrrh” and “Beirut Blues”, and the short story collection “I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops”. “A Beauty Parlour for Swans” gives voice to the interior life of an Arab woman, and is written with the author’s characteristic perceptiveness, delicacy and unique humor.

Haruki Murakami and the Israeli-Palestinian Divide

Citing Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's English-language speech on Feb. 20 in Israel as recipient of the 2009 Jerusalem Prize, the Japan Times explores Israel's erection of a defense wall, its role in world affairs, and the human compulsion to divide and separate ourselves.

From Murakami's speech:

Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. . . . Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. . . . Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell.