In Brief

  • The Seattle P.I.‘s John Marshall has put together a list of books for holiday giving.
  • Korash Huseyin, the editor of the Kashgar Literature Review, was sentenced by the Chinese government to three years’ imprisonment for writing a political fable.
  • Anne Marie O’Connor has a lengthy profile of Marjane Satrapi in the Los Angeles Times.
  • The Lit Saloon computes the ratio of fiction to non-fiction book reviews in the NYTBR, and finds it wanting.
  • Of Gabriel García Márquez’s new novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Michiko Kakutani writes: “[It] is ballyhooed by its publishers as the first work of fiction by Gabriel García Márquez in 10 years. It turns out not to have been worth the wait.”
  • Syrian poet Adonis will visit Iran to give readings. He will travel with Venus Khoury-Ghata, his translator into French, and a fine poet in her own right.