Laila Lalami

The Daily Star has a very interesting overview of how the Frankfurt Book Fair is being talked about in the Arab media.

Many arguments have been raised that the representation of the Arab world at the fair will be too one-sided – but in contradictory ways. Some believe that there will too much work presented from Egypt; Some pundits think the fair will be too biased towards the Gulf, while others do not; And some believe representation from the Arab World will be too political, while others believe it will not be political enough.

Another interesting bit in the article: Contrary to earlier reports, Morocco will in fact be represented, but has organized its own program separate from the main body, which is organized by the Arab League.

On the German side, however, organizers have been impressed by the diversity and quantity of the Arab program. While most countries seem to be represented adequately enough, the decision by Lebanon, Kuwait and Morocco might have been for the better. Lebanon and Morocco, in particular, almost seem to be over-represented at the fair.

Germany is a big publishing market (the article says it puts out 80,000 titles a year) and this article is really whetting my appetite. I’m very curious as to what will happen–which titles will end up being translated and which will be ignored, etc.

Charles Freund re-examines Mohammed Berrada’s surrealistic The Story of the Severed Head in light of recent developments in Iraq. In Berrada’s work, a head is severed from its corpse, delivers a speech, and is judged by a ghost.

Of course, the most obvious source of the story’s renewed timeliness is the severed head itself. Originally a device intended by Barrada to evoke antique horrors for his modern Arab readers, it may now evoke instead the disgust of daily reality. Beheadings or threats of beheadings are in the news almost every day, thanks to murderers who are acting in the name of Islamist political fantasies. Headless bodies are found floating in the Tigris River, and bodiless heads are discovered in Saudi refrigerators. Videotaped beheadings may be watched at any time on the internet, their appalling images overwhelming Barrada’s or anyone else’s attempts to capture their savagery in words. Barrada’s quarter-century-old political horror story is now our daily reality.

Freund places Berrada’s work firmly in the tradition of fantastic and surrealistic works that appeared in the Arab world in the 1960s, probably in response to Nasserism. Berrada’s story dealt with the circularity of nationalist thought.

What happens when someone – or something – attempts to break this cycle? In Barrada’s tale, the people react to the head’s attempt to make them “call things by their name and embrace realities” in this way: They hurl abuse at the head. They speculate as to whether the head is a tool of a foreign power. They answer, “We don’t have to put up with someone who insults us and reviles us.” The final judgment of the head is delivered at its state trial: Return the head to the corpse, orders a ghostly judge who has risen from the past, “and cut off the tongue.”

I was quite disappointed that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie didn’t make the shortlist for the Man Booker this year. The longlist had featured only five other women beside Adichie and now the shortlist only has one (token) woman. Coverage for the prize has began in earnest in the British press. The bookies are supposedly tipping David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) as the favorite. It was the subject of one of Mark’s recent reviews, which led to a rather animated discussion in the comments section. But Kate Summerscale over at the Telegraph thinks Alan Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty) will beat Mitchell. The Guardian‘s John Ezard catches up with Gerard Woodward, who is said to be a longshot. Last year, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane was deemed the favorite, but DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little ultimately won.

I had to read this a couple of times to make sure I got it right. A Christian college student in Mississippi has dropped out rather than read the required literature for her classes.

Bannerman, who just transferred to [the University of Southern Mississippi] this semester, says the proverbial last straw came after only a few days on campus, when she was required to read a sex-filled, profanity-laced book called Snow Falling On Cedars in her analysis of literature course. “It was just so offensive to me that I couldn’t read it anymore, so I just took the book and tossed it,” she says, “It was at that moment that I thought, I can’t do this — I can’t read this book.”

I’m still stuck at the first line. Snow Falling on Cedars?

Alexander McCall Smith’s two-part essay for the Scotsman reveals a rather interesting portrait of the artist, and it’s not altogether flattering. In part 1, for instance, McCall Smith talks about being born and growing up in Zimbabwe, but his condemnation of Britain’s colonial past rings hollow.

They were in some respects monstrously unjust, although the injustice would not always strike those who lived in them at the time. It often comes home later, when one realises just how great was the colonial imposition on sub-Saharan Africa, and just what strutting arrogance it had involved. But of course one has to temper that judgment with assessment of the post-colonial African state which, in many cases, has been a nightmare.

Let me see. If someone invaded your house, stole your belongings, enslaved your children, then finally left but continued to do business with the squatter that took his place, should you be to blame? In part 2, Smith talks about visiting Botswana, and how he decided to choose this country (rather than his native Zimbabwe) as the setting for his detective stories.
Related: the photographer whose pictures has been used for some of Alexander McCall Smith’s book covers is featured here.

Though the books have been a success worldwide, [Sandy Grant's] pictures are in part as popular as the books. While McCall Smith is publishing’s new hero, celebrated by media everywhere, Grant is on the other side of the spectrum. He is not celebrated nor is he any hero.

Harriet Denison shares adventures from her two-month road trip in Travels With Turtle at 7 p.m. on Thursday Sept. 23, at Broadway Books, 1714 N.E. Broadway.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler reads from Had a Good Time: Stories From American Postcards at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Sept. 23, at Twenty-third Avenue Books, 1015 N.W. 23rd Ave.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson discuss their children’s book Peter and the Starcatchers at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, at the First Baptist Church, 909 S.W. 11th Ave.
Anthony Doerr reads from his novel About Grace at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.

The Man Booker shortlist has been announced. They are Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit, Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Colm Toibin’s The Master, and Gerard Woodward’s I’ll Go To Bed At Noon.

The leader of the free world can’t keep terrorists’ names straight. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, he attributed the murder of Leon Klinghoffer during the Achile Lauro hijacking to Abu Nidal. Trouble is, it wasn’t Abu Nidal, it was Abu Abbas who was responsible. Bush made the same mistake 10 times before as the Boston Globe reports. (Memo to Rove: The cue cards aren’t working anymore.)
Elsewhere, a discombobulated Rumsfeld seems to have worked so hard at representing Saddam as a partner with Bin Laden that now he can’t even keep the two straight. At a speech this past Friday he mixed up Saddam and bin Laden twice.

Saddam Hussein, if he’s alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we’ve not seen him on a video since 2001.

Wired’s Joanna Glasner tries to understand why the 9/11 Commission report, which can be downloaded for free, became a bestseller as a paperback edition.

A sobering quote from an interview with American professor Donald Keene in Asahi Shimbun.

However, most young American scholars of Japanese literature are more interested in contemporary literature. The works of Haruki Murakami have been published by Knopf, the outstanding publisher of translations, and are popular.
But, compared to 20 or 30 years ago, when Knopf published at least one Japanese novel every year, translations have appeared irregularly in recent years. Only a few editors believe that publishing a Japanese novel is so important that it must be continued, even if the book does not sell.

Unfortunately, later on in the piece he makes some idiotic comment about “good cause” for prejudices, but the link is there if you’re curious.