Laila Lalami

The Dutch translation of my novel, Secret Son, is being published this week in Amsterdam, under the title De Geheime Zoon. Since this blog has a fair number of Dutch readers, I thought I’d mention this. Go out and get it! I won’t be traveling to the Netherlands this time, but I hope that readers who read the book will report back with their thoughts.

One of the books I’m most excited about this fall is Chinua Achebe’s The Education of a British-Protected Child, a collection of essays about his life in Nigeria and America. It’s being published this week and I believe this is his first book since Home and Exile, which was based on lectures he gave at Harvard. There is some coverage at Reuters, though it follows the usual, predictable track: famous novelist, Things Fall Apart, grandfather of African literature, etc.

It has been disappointing to see so many of our leading artists and writers line up in defense of Roman Polanski. Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher who once said that the Muslim veil was “an invitation to rape,” has now been confronted with an actual case of rape, but appears to think there should be an exception for genius filmmakers. Levy has drafted a petition in defense of Polanski. It is true that Levy has fought against rape—but in regions like Darfur and Bosnia. Now that the perpetrator is in his own backyard, he talks of his outrage as seeing Polanski “apprehended like a common terrorist.”