Laila Lalami

Over the last few days, I’ve seen several articles about books of fiction that seem newly relevant in the aftermath of the London attacks. Over at the Times, for instance, Helen Rumbelow revisits Hanif Kureishi’s short story “My Son the Fanatic,” which is about an older Pakistani man who watches helplessly as his son Ali is taken in by fundamentalists. The story appeared in Love In A Blue Time, and was also adapted by Kureishi for the screen. She also suggests Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, in which young Millat’s transformation from hipster to Satanic-Verses-burning-goon is dramatized with conviction and humor. Lastly, Rumbelow mentions Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, for its depiction of a young Islamist revolutionary (with whom Nazneen has an affair).

Over at the Mobile Register, John Sledge devotes a column to Brick Lane, and finds that Ali provides “a fully rounded portrait of one family and its confrontation with inexorable social and historical forces.”

Meanwhile, over at Salon, Laura Miller reviews three books of non-fiction: Robert Pape’s Dying to Win, Terry McDermott’s Perfect Soldiers and Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God, and gets incrementally more positive about each book in turn.

Amnesty International reports that six human rights activists were arrested by the Moroccan government in Western Sahara, and some of them possibly tortured.

The rights activists are under investigation for allegedly participating in or promoting an armed gathering. Amnesty International fears that they have been targeted because of their human rights work during recent events or their openly held views in favour of independence of Western Sahara.

Read the full report here.

This is what seven books of fiction and a Booker Prize shortlist buys you: a 200-word review in the New York Times. And you share the same page with five other brown writers.

Mary Anne Mohanraj‘s debut collection, Bodies in Motion, is reviewed over at the SF Chronicle.

[It] becomes noteworthy that a collection containing so many figuratively paralyzed individuals is titled “Bodies in Motion.” Much of this collection is about juxtapositions: characters finding ways of movement in situations that seem hopelessly static. People must compromise, finding pockets of richness amid deprivation of truth, sex, love and self-expression.

The Boston Globe also gave it a positive review.

I suppose it’s fashionable to write books about how much you hate liberals, and to top the list with people like Michael Moore. So Bernard Goldberg’s 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is nothing new and could have just joined the piles of other books like it. Except Goldberg had to open his big mouth and say things like this:

Moore 20 years ago would have been a fringe character on the left. Now he represents mainstream liberalism…I guess I’m conservative on some issues, but on certain social issues, I’m quite liberal. I don’t care if Adam marries Steve. I have publicly said that I would make racial discrimination not just a civil offense but a criminal offense. But I’m against affirmative action because I don’t see why the children of Diana Ross should get some extra points but the sons of an Anglo-Saxon coal miner from West Virginia don’t get any points.

Because that’s what affirmative action is all about: helping all those rich, privileged black kids get into college.

It’s very hard for me to be anything but cynical when I read news about the new Iraqi constitution:

If ever the women of Iraq needed support from the international community, the UN, and, in particular, the UK government, it is now. With only two weeks until the country’s draft constitution is due to be ready (the deadline is August 15) who else can help Iraqi women to prevent the total erosion of their human rights – rights they have enjoyed, in a secular state, since 1959?

Tony Blair, who continues to justify the invasion of the country as the only means to topple a brutal dictatorship and help to establish democracy, now has an obligation to use all his powers to avert a new dictatorship in Iraq – that of the mullahs over women.

The unparalleled violence of the past 30 years – three wars, the horrors perpetrated by Saddam Hussein and the killings of thousands of Iraqi civilians since the occupation – have meant the majority of the Iraqi population is female. Furthermore, it is estimated that more than 60% of this majority are female heads of households, as widows or wives of the “disappeared”. There is barely a family that does not have its unprecedented share of widows and single women. And it is these women who must shoulder the sole responsibility for raising the next generation, the orphans and children, and caring for the wounded, sick, elderly and traumatised. Apart from considerations of humanity and human rights, the future of Iraq will depend greatly on its women, many of whom, in the hitherto secular state, are well-educated professionals and a key resource in the reconstruction of the economy as well as the social fabric of communities.

Read the Guardian article here.

Many thanks indeed to Randa Jarrar who’s been blogging at Moorishgirl on Fridays for several months now. I know some of you are wondering whether there will be any content here on Fridays and what prompted the change in schedule. As I get closer to the release of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits I find that there is a lot that I want to talk about that doesn’t always fit in the daily digests, recommendations, reviews, and other news I post during the week. So I wanted to devote Fridays to talking about Hope, and to share some of the latest news about it. Meanwhile Randa’s blog, Rockslinga, continues to be one of my must-reads, and I urge you to add it to your bookmarks.