It’s a slow start here at Casa Moorishgirl. I was out of town for a wedding and just flew back this am, so I’m afraid there are awfully mundane, terribly unliterary matters that need attending to, but please come back after lunchtime and I should have a few posts up for you then.
Rock star Bono has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Medal of Honour by the Chilean government for his contribution to music and to humanitarian causes.
The second part of Brian Whitaker’s article on publishing in the Arab world is up at the Guardian. (For links and commentary on the first part, go here.) This time, Whitaker tackles the issue of language. Very little foreign fiction is published in the U.S. (only about 3% of the books that come out every year are translations) and only an infinitesimal percentage comes from Arab fiction. Reasons for this, Whitaker says, range from a lack of aggressive marketing by Arab publishers of their authors’ translation rights to a shortage of qualified translators (I don’t actually buy this last argument, but, let’s just move on for now.)
[Peter Ripken, of the German Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature] says that when an Arabic book does come to the attention of a western publisher, it is usually as a result of it having been censored by Arab authorities or spotted by an enthusiastic translator. He also accuses western publishers of imposing their own ideas of what Arab creative writing should be about, selectively translating books that “meet the readers’ often prejudiced expectations of the orient”.
Readers of this blog will probably remember the case of Norma Khouri, whose bestselling hoax preyed on the expectations of the Western reader.
The main problem, however, is that works of Arabic origin are not widely read in the west. Only a few authors manage sales of more than 10,000 in translation, but it is unclear whether this is because readers do not like them or simply do not know about them.
I think probably readers don’t know if they’ll like something until they’ve had a sampling, and frankly what’s being translated for the American market right now is woefully out of date. With all due respect to Nobel winner Mahfouz and the like, I think there’s a need for something a little fresher to come out of the Arab world (there are exceptions–Hanan Al-Shaykh comes to mind, for instance). Whitaker himself does mention three younger authors, but one of them (Rabih Alameddine) actually writes in English, not Arabic, so he (Whitaker) isn’t really helping the issue. At any rate, it seems likely that the Frankfurt Book Fair will enable a few of the younger authors to get more exposure and perhaps open the European and American markets for them.
Powell’s has put up an interview with Marjane Satrapi, whose Persepolis 2 is out now.
Dave: At one point, you admit to sending an innocent stranger to jail to distract police from your own indiscretions. Do people confront you about that?
Satrapi: People were like, “Why did you say that about yourself?!” And I said, “Because each thing I say has its purpose.”
I consider myself a very nice person, really. I don’t do any harm to people. I’m not jealous or envious of anyone. If I can help people, I do. I consider myself a nice person, but even I could do that out of fear.
I was trying to say that what you have to be scared of is the fear, itself. Nothing but that. When you are scared, it’s not only your muscles that get completely stuck, but also your brain. You don’t think properly. That’s exactly what is happening in this country. People are so scared that they are willing to vote for Bush.
The SF Chronicle has a longish profile of debut author Joshua Braff, whose novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, has elicited comparisons to J.D. Salinger. (Braff happens to be the brother of actor/director Zach Braff of Garden State and Scrubs fame.) Elsewhere, the Houston Chronicle has a profile of Esmeralda Santiago, whose latest memoir, The Turkish Lover, is out now.
It began with a phone call. In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant. He was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad well known for its hostility towards the US occupation. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her.
Read Huda Alazawi’s testimony of her eight months in Abu Ghraib.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices will be made into an $80 Million Hollywood production starring Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai.
The Christian Science Monitor has a rave review of Tariq Ramadan’s Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Ramadan is the Swiss-born Muslim scholar who was barred without explanation from entering the United States to take up a position as lecturer at Notre-Dame University. The book is currently ranked at 9,333 on Amazon, so it’ll be interesting to see if Ramadan’s entry ban has any effect on sales.
A maid has become India’s latest literary sensation after her memoir became a bestseller.
The professor noticed she spent a lot of time dusting his large collection of tomes, especially those written in Bengali. “One day he caught me handling one of the books and asked me to read out the title,” Ms Haldar told BBC Hindi Online’s Alok Prakash Putul. “I was a bit hesitant. The book was Taslima Nasreen’s Amar Meyebela [My Girlhood].” Professor Kumar gave her the book and asked her to read it when she had time. “Later he gave me a notebook and pen and asked me to write my life story.”
Israeli author Amos Oz has been awarded the Ovidius Prize by the Romanian Writers’ Union, honoring both his literary work and his activism.
