Laila Lalami

In the latest issue of Poets & Writers (not yet online) there is an article by Thomas Hopkins about Zoo Press’ decision to cancel both its 2003 and 2004 short-story collection contests without giving refunds or providing a satisfactory explanation to the writers who entered the competitions. But I think the article missed two important points. One is that literary bloggers didn’t simply “air complaints about the Zoo Press contest”, as Hopkins suggests, but in fact were central in bringing this story to light in the first place. In reading the piece, one gets the impression that the story simply appeared in the community’s consciousness when in fact blogs were pivotal in bringing attention to it. The other point is that the blog that actually brought this story into the open and that provided Hopkins with several of his sources didn’t get mentioned. And that leads me to wonder if, despite the number of readers they draw, blogs are not yet part of the discourse, part of the conversation with other media.

Dannyreviews is a great place to look for book reviews. Nextbook is a gateway to Jewish literature, culture, and ideas. And Madinkbeard is a new addition to the lit blog sphere.

Well, what can I say? Junot Diaz kicks ass. I was thrilled to be in his class and learned more from him in one week than I did in entire semesters at other places. So I’m back and have about 150 messages in my inbox, so please bear with me, I will answer within the next few days.

I’m going to be away next week in San Francisco. I think I’ve turned off all the faucets and locked all the windows over here, so I’ll be leaving shortly. I’m taking my laptop, but don’t expect more than a few sporadic postings. You’ll probably be better off visiting any of the fine folks on the right, or stopping by Carrie A. A. Frye’s new blog, Tingle Alley, and Bookishblog, Jim Hanas’ home. That’s it for me. Be back on the 28th.

The IMPAC prize seems to have caused a spike in sales for Tahar Ben Jelloun’s This Blinding Absence of Light, as noticed by The Literary Saloon. This morning the novel is at an impressive sales rank of 175 on Amazon. (Meanwhile, this is all the NY Times had to say…)

If you’re interested in Moroccan literature, I’d like to recommend a few things. Mohammed Choukri’s For Bread Alone is a must-read and one of my all-time favorites. (Lit tidbit: the book, originally written in Moroccan Arabic–not the highfallutin Classical dialect of the elite–was translated into English by Paul Bowles and into French by none other than Tahar Ben Jelloun.)

Driss Chraibi used to be one of my favorites when I was a teenager, but I haven’t read him in a long time. Le Passe simple is a classic, and La Civilisation, ma mare has a wonderfully tender portrait of a mother caught between traditional roles and the attractions of modernity.

I also like Leila Abouzeid, whose seminal Year of the Elephant affected me deeply because it featured a female character I recognized, one that seemed to be a part of my life, rather than the usual, submissive cliche. (She’s also written a fantastic memoir, Return to Childhood.)

And I’d also recommend anything by Edmond Amran ElMaleh, who chronicled the Moroccan Jewish experience in his memoirs, and whose books were passed around in my high school until the pages started falling off.

If you prefer to read fiction in English, you might want to check out Si Yussef, by Anouar Majid.

If you don’t speak French, you should learn it just so you can appreciate how funny this is:

“Dans le monde merveilleux de la justice (et de l’edition), publier le livre d’une petasse menopause qui prefere les chevres et les bebes phoques aux atres humains (meme moi, je ne prefere pas les chats aux gens, et portant, je HAIS les gens…), l’incitation la haine raciale ne coute que 5.000 euros.

Via La Muselivre.

Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun has just won the International IMPAC Dublin Award, the world’s largest literary prize. (The shortlist included works by Paul Auster, William Boyd, Sandra Cisneros, Jeffrey Eugenides, Maggie Gee, Amin Maalouf, Rohinton Mistry, Atiq Rahimi, and Olga Tokarczuk.)

Ben Jelloun’s novel, This Blinding Absence of Light (Cette Aveuglante absence de lumiere), about the horrors endured by a group of political prisoners in a desert jail in Morocco, struck a chord with the jury:

“The story about the hellholes and the survivors – the living cadavers – is a moving description of both unlimited evil and the power of human spirit to survive,” said a spokesperson for the jury. “We admired the novel’s beauty and clarity of language, its formal restraint which gives it subtle power, its commitment to its terrible subject, its passionate evocation of the human soul and the will to survive.”

Although the BBC article doesn’t go into details about this, the novel had a difficult genesis. The jail in This Blinding Absence of Light is modeled after the infamous Tazmamart prison, where fifty-eight student officers who had participated in a failed coup d’etat against King Hassan II were jailed for more than eighteen years, in solitary confinement. The very existence of the prison was denied by the Moroccan government. After the political reforms of 1991, the prisoners were freed and some of them wrote books about their ordeal. It was then that Ben Jelloun contacted Aziz Binebine, one of the survivors, in order to tell his story in the form of a novel. Many people (including Ahmed Marzouki, whose memoir, Tazmamart: Cellule 10, was reviewed here at Moorishgirl) were upset with Ben Jelloun because they felt that, as an internationally renowned author, he could have done something to attract attention to the prisoners’ plight before it became a trendy cause. Ben Jelloun defended himself against these accusations, and said he would share profits from the novel with Binebine.

Ben Jelloun remains perhaps the best-known l’migre author from the Moroccan diaspora. He’s a household name in Morocco, of course, and in France, where he resides and where he’s won the prestigious Prix Goncourt for La Nuit sacree. In the U.S. Ben Jelloun remains largely unknown, I think. For instance, the last time I looked for his books at a bookstore, I couldn’t find them under ‘Ben Jelloun’ or under ‘Jelloun’ even though the catalog said that the bookstore had his works. Turns out they had been filed under ‘Tahar.’ At any rate, I’m happy with the selection and hope that it will bring more attention not just to Ben Jelloun but also to Moroccan literature in general.

Links: Ben Jelloun’s website.

You haven’t heard the last of The Bondwoman’s Narrative. Hannah Crafts, the woman who is believed to have written the novel, is the subject of a forthcoming book that will try to elucidate her identity.

I’m quite curious about Crafts, since I was never fully convinced by Henry Louis Gates’ process of authentication, especially after a Princeton student noticed passages that are remarkably similar to Dickens’ Bleak House, something that had eluded the esteemed professor.

Some Wall Street Journal reporters began withholding their bylines from stories in Wednesday editions, part of a planned two-day protest after contract negotiations soured with their employer, Dow Jones & Co.

More about the protest.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bookninja‘s coverage for Bloomsday.