Laila Lalami

A review of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits appears in the October/November issue of Bust, with hot mama Susan Sarandon on the cover. You can read a snippet of it here. For the full review, check out your local newstand.

It’s become a bit of a tradition. Every year, before the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, people start throwing around the name of Syrian poet Adonis (or Adunis). They did it in 2003. And in 2004. And now in 2005. I’m tired of getting disappointed every time. I’m just going to assume it’s NOT going to be Adonis this year.

Over at The Stranger, Christopher Frizelle offers: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at ‘On Beauty’.”

Simon Blackburn’s Truth has been on my TBR pile for weeks. I’m still reading for work at the moment, but hope to finally relax in a couple of weeks and start going through the books. Anyway, this NPR piece on the book revived my interest.

Last week, I posted about seeing my book on the shelves and asked readers to report any sightings.

Ed Champion sent three photos from Bay Area bookstores. Here’s HODP at City Lights, where it keeps company to Neil LaBute’s collection of stories, Seconds of Pleasure:

At Booksmith, it sits next to Adam Langer’s The Washington Story:

And at Alexander Book Co, it looks like it’s shelved in the stacks, next to Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake:

Here, in the Pacific Northwest, Valerie T. spotted Hope at the University Bookstore in Seattle. (Hi, Nick!)

We’ve also had two sightings in Milwaukee, both at Schwartz Bookstores, which also made it a Schwartz 100 pick. Readers Michael N. and Tom N. wrote in with the news. Milwaukee rocks.

In Chicago, HODP caught the eye of Laura C. at Women and Children First. Meanwhile, Tod Goldberg picked up his copy at Borders in Chicago, where he’d made a stop on his tour to promote his own collection, Simplify.

And below is a camera phone photo sent in by Rima M., who saw HODP at Brookline Booksmith in Boston:

Want to share your photos? Email me!

Today’s giveaway is Holiday Reinhorn’s story collection, Big Cats. The first time I read Reinhorn’s work was last year; a fine piece of hers had appeared in the Land-Grant College Review and I liked it quite a bit. When the book came out, I went to hear her read at Powell’s and got my copy. (She’s from Portland, but now lives in L.A.)

Here’s your question of the day: What is the title of Holiday Reinhorn’s story that appeared in Land-Grant? Send your answer, and your mailing address, to llalami AT yahoo DOT com. We here at Moorishgirl.com operate on a first-come first-serve basis.

Update: The winner is Robert S. from Charlotte, NC.

NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to librarian Nancy Pearl about her favorite short story collections, two of which are perennial favorites among my writer friends: Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America and T.C. Boyle’s After the Plague.

The Christian Science Monitor has a thoughtful, well-researched piece on the subject of immigration in Morocco. With as many as 10% of native-born Moroccans now living abroad, the country has come to rely on its diaspora for a significant portion of its hard currency income. What’s even more interesting is the kind of Moroccans who are leaving the country–not whom you might expect:

“Most of the people in Tarfaya dream of being somewhere else. That’s why they all have satellite dishes. They’re not watching Moroccan TV, they’re watching French and Spanish, aspiring to be somewhere else,” says [film director Daoud Oulad Syad] Mr. Syad.

The fact that so many Moroccans dream of leaving significantly threatens Morocco’s economic development, social well-being, and political stability. “Every year Morocco loses two to three percent of its GNP to brain drain,” says Lahlou. “Every year we lose between 3,000 and 5,000 professors, doctors, and engineers annually.”

This loss means fewer well-educated, ambitious citizens who could help lead their country. But there is an irony here, for if through emigration Morocco loses capital in some forms, it gains it through the money its emigrants send back to their families. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund reports that a full 9 percent of Morocco’s GNP comes from remittances - a percentage far greater than the 1.66 percent sent home by Mexicans working in the US.

In related news, hundreds of sub-Saharan immigrants, who had been biding their time in northern Morocco waiting for a good time to cross into Europe, simply decided to storm the Spanish presidio of Ceuta using ladders to scale the fences. A many as 500 scaled the walls at once.

This week’s mass assaults on the lower part of the fence may have been brought on by work to double its height to 20 feet along the 6-mile border, which is now nearing completion.

Spain has owned the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern coast of Morocco since the late 15th Century.

Morocco, which claims them, is struggling to deal with an influx of sub-Saharan Africans into its territory as well as curb its own citizens’ attempts to use sea routes to cross to Spain illegally.

It’s turning into a big, bloody mess, and Morocco appeals to not have either the resources or the power to deal with this. The situation has only worsened in the last two years. Spain is scrambling to reform its laws, the article says:

Sub-Saharan immigrants present Spain with a worse problem than Moroccans or Algerians, whom it simply sends back, because it often lacks repatriation agreements with their countries of origin.

Spain has such a deal with Nigeria, is negotiating with Ghana but is only in preliminary talks with Cameroon and Mali, from where many of the migrants come, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Spain therefore often has no choice but to free these migrants, after handing them an expulsion order which the authorities cannot carry out.

So while the Moroccan government may be concerned about sub-Saharan immigrants in its territory, it can’t (or won’t) do much about Moroccans who decide to emigrate.

Publisher Richard Nash counters the argument posted yesterday regarding the Authors’ Guild vs. Google Print lawsuit.

I participate in Google Print for Publishers, where I do get kicked back some of the moolah, in exchange for them allowing larger snippets of text.

The money, he says, is negligible so far. He also adds:

From a legal standpoint: the fact that Google is For Profit does not eliminate the Fair Use argument. That is but one of the tests Congress established and that the Supreme Court has explored. Soft Skull is

Tingle Alley and Rake’s Progress top off their weeklong conversation about The People of Paper by inviting author Salvador Plascencia and editor Eli Horowitz to answer their questions.