Just in time for Reading the World, Critical Mass has begun a series of posts in which writers recommend books from around the world. Hisham Matar (In The Country of Men) puts in a few words about one of my favorite novels of all time: Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. See what Hisham had to say about it here.
Having completed a new draft of my novel, I am finally re-emerging from my apartment and going out on the town a bit. Last Saturday, for instance, I saw Hoba Hoba Spirit in a small concert in Casablanca. If you’re unfamiliar with this band, you can check out some of their music here, or, better yet, visit their website. They mix traditional instruments like the bendir or the qraqeb with electric guitar and bass, and the music they play fuses gnawa with rock, or ska with chaabi. One of the highlights of the evening was their cover of Nass El Ghiwane‘s “Fin Ghadi Biyya Khoya,” which they managed to modernize without losing anything of its spirit. Mostly, though, Hoba Hoba played original music, and what strikes me about those songs is that they have that rare quality of capturing a particular moment in Moroccan history, with lyrics that speak of life as we know it, of a country in the middle of great changes.
Photo credit: Hoba Hoba Spirit
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, one of my favorite novels this year, is this month’s Slate book club selection, and the site’s Meghan O’Rourke, Katie Roiphe, and John Burnham Schwartz discuss the novel in this podcast.
The May/June issue of the Boston Review is available online, with articles by Akbar Ganji, Hans Blix, Catherine Tumber, and others. The issue also includes the winning short story from the annual fiction contest, which was judged this year by the excellent George Saunders: “Transitory Cities,” by Padma Viswanathan. Here’s an excerpt:
(How did he come to bear others’ homes on his back?)
That question can only be answered by the one holding the strings ascending from Hram’s pivotal points, as from the joints of every bearer.
It’s not that Hram didn’t like bearing a building; he did. He received no acknowledgment—at least not from the tenants. He wouldn’t have wanted the residents of the building he bore to know that he chose where they would be when they walked out the front door of their apartment building in the morning, briefcase or tool kit or purse or newspaper in one hand, brown paper lunch bag in the other, ready to participate in maintaining the universe, their first task that of finding their way to the office or factory, which could be anywhere within their city.
Read this refreshingly imaginative story here.
Thanks to all those who spread the word and signed the petition. YouTube is now available again on Maroc Telecom.