Laila Lalami

I was asked to write a piece for the Nation magazine about the passing of Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz. Here’s the first paragraph:

The story of Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz is the story of modern Egypt itself. Born in 1911 in the Gamaliya district of Cairo, Mahfouz witnessed the last days of British colonial rule and Ottoman influence, the nationalist struggle of Saad Zaghloul, the reigns of King Fuad and King Farouq, the military coup of 1952, the establishment of the republic, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s takeover in 1954, the Suez Canal crisis, the rule of Anwar al-Sadat, the Camp David accords of 1978 and finally the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

You can read it all here.

This week, I’m giving away a copy of Los Angeles-based novelist Lisa Teasley’s new book Heat Signature. Heat charts the emotional journey of loss, as a young man tries to cope with the murder of his mother, which occurred sixteen years ago. The book has already received great reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times.

The first person to send me an email with the subject “Heat” gets the book. Also be sure to include your mailing address.

Update: The winner is Cigdem A. from Toronto.

I need a copy of Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, in the original Arabic, for a piece I’m thinking of writing. If you have an extra copy that you’re willing to part with, could you email me? I would be happy to trade several books for it.

Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz passed away today in Cairo. Although the news is not a shock–he had been seriously ill for a few weeks–it is still difficult to accept. I find myself thinking about the first time I read him, when I was twelve or thirteen. Our high school didn’t have a library, so our Arabic teachers organized a “borrowing club”–each of us would bring a book at the beginning of the trimester, and the books thus collected formed the class’s pool, from which we could choose what to read every other week. That’s how I came to Naguib Mahfouz’s Miramar, and, later, to his other novels and stories. I will have more to say about him and his significance to Arabic letters very soon. Stay tuned.

Yes, I am the “Arab chick” referred to in this Stranger article about Gary Shteyngart.

It really is unbelievable that, in 2006, a book critic at a major newspaper should write the following sentence, and actually get it published:

There are certain books that are so similar to one another they almost beg to be grouped together. This is largely true of Indian novels. Look closely at the ones published in the past, say, 25 years, and you’ll see that they’re virtually identical, in theme if not in style and content. For me, Midnight’s Children is indivisible from A Fine Balance, which in turn cannot be separated from A Suitable Boy. Directly or indirectly, all three books - and there are other notable examples - are concerned with the same thing: the state of Indian society in the wake of independence and partition.

The critic is Stephen Thompson, writing for The Scotsman. As Ed points out, this isn’t Thompson’s first brush with stupid generalizations. Last month, he dismissed all post-colonial African literature as “clichéd” because it continues to deal with the effect of European occupation of the continent.

I have basic cable only, but this month I forked out the 20 extra bucks and subscribed to HBO–so I can watch Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When The Levees Broke, which airs again tonight, in its entirety. If you can, please watch it.

I am still catching up with email, with reading, with the news, with the world, and so desperately trying not to post another rant. We’ll see how it goes.

The life of Moroccan novelist Mohamed Choukri is the stuff of legends: Illiterate until the age of 20, Choukri went on to learn how to read, became a schoolteacher, wrote novels and non-fiction works, and eventually became the head of the Arabic department at a Tangier college. But a controversy has erupted recently: Hassan Aachab, a friend of Choukri’s, now claims that the author started his schooling at the age of eleven, not twenty. Of course, Choukri passed on in November 2003, and can neither corroborate nor deny the charges.

Thanks to Amine for the link.

Naguib Mahfouz, who has been hospitalized since July 16, had seemed to be doing better last week, but I am told by a reliable reader that the Nobel winner is again in critical condition. We send him best wishes for a full recovery.

Update: A reader from Cairo writes in to say that “{Mahfouz’s] condition does not look good as he still has some internal bleeding” and that “the obituaries are already being written.” This is very upsetting.