Month: April 2004

Regular readers of Moorishgirl will know how much I enjoyed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. The novel was recently picked for the Orange Prize longlist, and now it’s made it onto the shortlist. The Guardian has the scoop about Adichie (though, strangely, the article claims Adichie is the only Nigerian writer ever to make a shortlist like this. As Lit Saloon pointed out, Ben Okri won the Booker a few years ago.) Adichie is up against Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake) Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire) Andrea Levy (Small Island) Gillian Slovo (Ice Road) and Rose Tremain (The Colour).

Related: The Moorishgirl review of the novel and an interview with Adichie.

The Literary Saloon has a few links on Arab reading culture, both articles being rather depressing reads. I particularly liked Abeer Mishkhas’ point about how there always seems to be money for football but not for promoting books.

Mizna has sent around a call for their second annual Arab film festival. Work must be submitted in VHS, DVD or MiniDV format by May 15. The festival will be held in September 2004.

“The Lizard,” an Iranian movie poking fun at the Islamic Republic’s clerics has become a huge box office hits, with tickets selling out days in advance.

In the film, thief Reza Marmoulak (Reza the Lizard) slips out of a prison hospital in his clerical disguise and takes up the life of a man of the cloth. As a preacher, his irreverent style — cracking suggestive jokes and referring to “brother (film-maker Quentin) Tarantino” during a sermon — has cinema audiences unaccustomed to open mockery of the clergy in stitches.

I hope this comes out here at some point, it’ll be a refreshing break from all the serious (fantastic, but dead serious) movies put out by Iranian filmmakers.