Laila Lalami

Trying to decide what to read this fall? Check out Marie Arana’s fall preview in the Washington Post, and Oscar Villalon’s forecast in the S.F. Chronicle. After perusing the pieces, I discovered that Random House is publishing a cool anthology: The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction, edited by Denys Johnson-Davies. I want a copy. NOW.

The July/August issue of the Women’s Review of Books includes a piece on my debut book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and Assia Djebbar’s novel Children of the New World, which finally appeared here in the U.S. in a translation by Marjolijn de Jager, forty years after its original publication. Unfortunately, this (very perceptive) review is not available online. Still, I couldn’t resist including at least this bit from Nadia Boudidah Falfoul’s piece:

In contrast to Djebar’s patriotic men and women who fight a common enemy and work toward a common dream, Lalami’s isolated characters share only their desperation. Although the French colonizer left Morocco decades ago, these people are estranged and displaced in their own country. Djebar’s fellagas, who sacrifice their lives for their country, have been replaced by Lalami’s harragas, who sacrifice their lives to flee it.

More here.

Michael Taeckens, director of publicity at Algonquin, wrote in to say that the 2007 edition of New Stories from the South will be edited by…Edward P. Jones. Yay! The 2006 edition of the seminal series just came out a couple of weeks ago, and the stories in it were selected by guest editor Allan Gurganus.

Alaa Al-Aswany’s best-selling novel, The Yacoubian Building, finally came out in the United States this month, in a translation by Humphrey Davies. Reviews have begun to appear: Here’s Lorraine Adams’ take in the New York Times and John Freeman’s assessment in the San Francisco Chronicle. For those who care, here’s what I thought of it when I read it last year.

I am a huge fan of Edward P. Jones, so I’ve been eagerly anticipating the publication of his new collection of short stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Several of the stories in the book have already appeared in print (in the New Yorker, for example) and I knew I would have at least the delight of re-reading those, if nothing else. But the rest of the book enchants both Dave Eggers, as you can see from his glowing review in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, and Jonathan Yardley, whose write-up in the Washington Post begins with the words: “Now there can be no doubt about it: Edward P. Jones belongs in the first rank of American letters.” Damn right.

I am finally back at home, after an exhilarating (and exhausting) stay in Middlebury, Vermont for Bread Loaf. Posting should resume soon.

The last two days at Bread Loaf were my busiest yet. On Tuesday, I taught a craft class on “The Character’s Language” or what to do when the characters we create do not speak the language in which we write. If your heroine speaks Urdu or Igbo or Arabic, if she thinks in Japanese or Afrikaans, how do you render her thoughts and her speech convincingly? We took a critical look at several excerpts from the work of: Mary Yukari Waters, Andre Dubus III, Mona Simpson, Ahdaf Soueif, Junot Díaz, Ha Jin, and Aleksandar Hemon. I also co-taught the regular fiction workshop with Robert Boswell that day.

Then on Wednesday, I gave a reading with the poet Carl Phillips. Instead of picking something from Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, I read two sections from the first chapter of my current novel. It was the first time I had ever done a public reading of a manuscript still in progress, but I figured it would motivate me to get my act together and finish my current revision.

I also attended readings by the wait staff and the social staff–these are highly anticipated events at Bread Loaf, because the material is usually excellent, and this year’s batch was no exception.

I am still in Vermont, fighting off bugs (what is it with bugs in this state? They’ve got mosquitoes the size of birds, and ants and spiders and bees and flies and moths and a dozen other insects I can’t even name) and having far too great a time to blog much at all. Yesterday we attended a great lecture by Josip Novakovich on writing in English as a second language, Helen Schulman read from her upcoming novel A Day at the Beach, and Peter Orner from his recently published one (The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo.) We also had an amazing craft class with Robert Boswell, in which we read Mary Robison’s story “Pretty Ice” and studied why it worked so well. Then there were readings by Toi Derricotte and Gonzalo Barr and David Tucker and half a dozen other people whom I’m sure I’m forgetting. Now I have to go prepare for a class I’m teaching tomorrow. More Soon.

Los Angeles-based writer and blogger Mark Sarvas offers his thoughts on the Günter Grass controversy:

We’re not suggesting - as some commentors seem to think - that he should be punished for youthful mistakes or for having been a Nazi (although it’s scarcely a fait accompli that he shouldn’t). We are saying that the sheer, naked, breathtaking hypocrisy here is inarguable. This cuts to the heart of what one requires of one’s moral exemplars, self-appointed or otherwise. A certain amount of consistency seems a minimum; at the other extreme, being outrightly two-faced for a period of 60 years seems ample grounds to merit reassessment of Grass’ place. Talk of “punishment” and the like is silly, but as Bill Clinton knew, it’s all about the legacy - and Grass’ should be reevaluated and appropriately and permanently diminished over this.

There is also a great discussion going on in the comment section of his blog.

“[A]buse is not sanctified by its duration or abundance; it must remain susceptible to question and challenge, no matter how long it takes.”

Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile.