Laila Lalami

Charles McGrath interviews John Updike over at the New York Times about his new novel, Terrorist. A snippet:

[Updike] went on: “I think I felt I could understand the animosity and hatred which an Islamic believer would have for our system. Nobody’s trying to see it from that point of view. I guess I have stuck my neck out here in a number of ways, but that’s what writers are for, maybe.”

Hmm. Yeah. Nobody. Except for Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), Nadeem Aslam (Maps for Lost Lovers), Slimane Benaissa (The Last Night of A Damned Soul), Alaa Al-Aswany (The Yacoubian Building), and half of contemporary Algerian novelists.

The Kigali New Times reports of concerns about An Ordinary Man, the memoir by Paul Rusesabagina (of Hotel Rwanda fame). Linda Melvern, an independent researcher into the genocide claims that the version of events described in the book “seems to deviate from the facts as I have researched them.” You can read more about it here.

The Guardian Hay Festival opened last Friday–some interesting stuff, which you can read about in almost real time on their ‘Culture Vulture’ blog.

My short story “A Nice Young Man,” which appeared in Pindeldyboz, has been translated into Farsi by Asad Amraee, and published in Atiye Weekly Magazine. I can’t read the piece, obviously, but Farsi uses Arabic characters, so I can understand a few words here and there. Any readers out there who are fluent in Farsi? Let me know what you think.

My review of Meg Mullins’ The Rug Merchant appeared in the Washington Post Book World this past weekend. Here’s an excerpt:

The Rug Merchant is based on a short story by the same name that appeared in the Iowa Review and was later anthologized in Best American Short Stories (2002). The delicate, subtle style that highlighted that work can frequently be found in the novel. But the long form also reveals shortcomings in the consistency of the narrator’s voice. In addition, Mullins appears to have trouble creating full lives for her characters. Although we hear that Ushman has a successful business, we never see him interact with any clients except Mrs. Roberts. He never chats with a neighbor, doesn’t meet any friends, doesn’t have any employees. Indeed, the only relationships he appears to have are those that serve the plot.

The Rug Merchant chronicles one man’s relationship with two very different women — one a friend, the other a lover — and the more successful rendering is the least romantic. Ushman’s friendship with Mrs. Roberts reveals a darker and affecting side to both of them, a touch that remains missing from the love affair with Stella. This imbalance makes the world that Mullins has created engaging, but not fully rewarding.

You can read it in full here.

This week, the Lit Blog Co-Op will be discussing its spring 2006 Read This! selection, Television, by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint, translated from the French by Jordan Stump. Check it out.

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis is being made into a film by Sony, and is due out in 2007. Satrapi herself will direct it, along with Vincent Paronnaud.

(via.)

I mentioned last week Rachid Bouchareb’s new film, Indigènes, which is about a little known chapter of history: That (Muslim) soldiers from the French colonies were sent to fight the Nazis. It’s a subject that’s near to my heart, because my grandfather was part of the Tirailleurs Marocains, so I am dying to see the movie. I just heard that the ensemble cast (Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, and Samy Naceri) has won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film doesn’t have a U.S. distributor yet, but one hopes that the attention at Cannes will help get it to theatres here.
I’d like to read Elaine Sciolino’s interview with Jamel Debbouze in the NYT, but it’s hidden behind a subscription wall. Can someone send it to me? Thanks, A. Here’s a snippet:

He achieved international recognition with the 2001 film “Amélie,” in which he played Lucien, a stammering grocer’s assistant. In “Astérix and Obélix: Mission Cleopatra” the next year, Mr. Debbouze played an incompetent Egyptian architect who never made his deadlines and put doors near ceilings, justifying them by saying, “In case you ever want to build a second floor.” That role earned him $2.7 million,
making him one of France’s top-grossing actors. Now only Gérard Depardieu commands a higher salary per film.

He credits his mother, who rose every morning at 4 and held down back-to-back jobs to help support him and his five siblings, for his success.

“In everything that’s black, she sees rose, yellow, green,” he said. His mother, a Muslim, wears a headscarf in public.

When he told his father, now a retired sweeper in the Métro, that he wanted to be a comedian, he said his father replied, “That’s for drug addicts and homosexuals.” After a pause, Mr. Debbouze smiled and added, “But he calmed down when I gave him his first Mercedes.”

Mr. Debbouze resents that he is given such labels as “the prince of the housing projects” or the “Arab with attitude.”

“They categorize us always as ‘actors of Moroccan origin,’” he said. “I am not an ‘actor of Moroccan origin.’ I am an actor.”

I’m not sure why we needed to hear about his mother’s headscarf, but oh wait, it is the NYT, after all.

I have been following the excellent coverage at The Arabist of all the pro-reform demonstrations in Egypt, where activists are being beaten, tortured, and sodomized. It’s utterly revolting stuff, and though it’s not new to Mubarak’s regime, the sheer magnitude of the arrests would seem to indicate that the country is on the brink of an implosion.

There’s also a worthwhile opinion piece by novelist Ahdaf Soueif in the Guardian ‘Comment Is Free‘ blog:

But Egypt has been teetering for years on the edge of chaos. The process of development the country has been subjected to for the last 30 years is now affecting the life of every citizen. Cairo has unacceptable levels of pollution; the haphazard slums that have sprung up have no access to clean water. For the first time in history Egyptians are undernourished. Cancer, respiratory disease and hepatitis C run rampant – said to be caused by suspect agricultural pesticides and other chemical imports. Unemployment sits at 12%. A nation that’s been rooted in its land for six millennia is queueing at every embassy’s immigration counter. Education has become a farce; so has healthcare. The gap between rich and poor yawns obscenely and the middle classes have vanished into it. And most of this is avoidable – if the country were run in the interests of its people, by a government accountable to the people and governed by the law and the constitution. This is what the reform movement is about.

The fact that Egypt has not yet collapsed is largely because of values that are entrenched in the Egyptian way of life: patience, compromise and solidarity. But now matters are coming to a head: a fault line is being created between Egyptian Copts and Egyptian Muslims, and there is official negligence and corruption. The situation becomes more and more unsettling.

Egypt, of course, is a top recipient of U.S. aid. Democracy is on the march, I tell you.

This week, I’m giving away a copy of Yasmina Khadra’s The Attack, translated by John Cullen. The novel is about a Palestinian-Israeli surgeon named Amin Jaafari, who is on duty when victims of a suicide bombing are brought in to the emergency room. Among the dead and dismembered, he discovers the body of his wife, and learns that she played a crucial role in the attack. The book has received two reviews in the New York Times, one by Janet Maslin, the other by Lorraine Adams, and is sure to get more attention from the media. For my money, though, the best review I’ve read of Khadra’s work appeared a couple of years ago in the London Review of Books. Check it out.

The third person to correctly answer this question gets the book: What is Yasmina Khadra’s real name? Please use the subject line “The Attack” in your email. And please include your street address. Previous winners excluded. Update: The winner is Richard G. from Brooklyn, New York.