News

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, recommends memoirs, novels, articles, websites, films, music, and art from and about Iran for the Washington Post.

Hanif Kureishi reflects on how his play, Borderline, which was staged 25 years ago, might still be relevant for Asians in Britain. The play dealt with riots, fascism, and feminism, all of which are still around, though the context for them has changed.

During the 10 years between the Southall riots and the demonstration against The Satanic Verses, the community had become politicised by radical Islam, something that had been developing throughout the Muslim world since decolonisation. This version of Islam imposed an identity and solidarity on a besieged community. It came to mean rebellion, purity, integrity. But it was also a trap. Once this ideology had been adopted – and political conversations could only take place within its terms – it entailed numerous constraints, locking the community in, as well as divorcing it from possible sources of creativity: dissidence, criticism, sexuality. Its authoritarianism, stifling to those within, and appearing fascistic to those without, rejected the very liberalism the community required in order to flourish in the modern world. It was tragic: what had protected the community from racism and disintegration came to tyrannise it.

You can read the full essay here.

Over at the Observer, Jason Burke catches up with Faïza Guène, the “voice of the suburbs.” (What? You didn’t know there was only one? Well, now you know.)

Guène’s parents came from Algeria and her family – father a manual worker, mother who has never worked (As if, Ed.)- is very close. The fact that many readers, especially in France, jumped to the conclusion that the broken family of the novel is her own irritates her – ‘I have written a novel, but I always end up being asked about social issues and so on.’ It is part of the stereotyping that much of the book is devoted to combating.

Though not intellectuals, Guène’s parents were ‘deeply respectful’ of books, she tells me. ‘I learned to read when I was very young,’ Guène says. But in Les Courtillières, the large, public-housing projects where Guène grew up and still lives, there were almost no cultural facilities at all. ‘Books are expensive things. My book in its first edition cost €18. If I hadn’t written it, I would not have bought it.’

Guène’s first book is due out in the United States in June, under the title Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (in an excellent translation by Sarah Adams, by the way.)

The SF Chronicle‘s Edward Guthmann interviews Junot Díaz, who was in town to support the staging of his short story, “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars,” at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. Of course, the subject of that long-awaited second novel came up:

As a Latin American author, Diaz feels a mandate to give young Latinos, especially Dominican Americans, a voice and a touchstone to measure their experience. The problem, he freely admits, is the fact that he’s an incredibly slow writer. “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars” took a year. It’s been 10 years since “Drown” was published, and the novel he’s working on is in its fifth year of gestation.

Diaz sighs at the thought of his uncooperative work rhythms. “Who doesn’t want to be constantly working?” he asks. “I drove myself nuts for a couple years, gave myself a lot of hassle.” At the beginning of writing his novel, “I was a lot more deranged about it ’cause I didn’t have the sense that I was ever going to find my way through it. Then I finally began to embrace my inner slowpoke.

If you read this blog consistently, you know how much I adore and admire Díaz, so go on over there and read the piece.

Lorraine Ali meets profile of Eddie Vedder and his bandmates for Newsweek:

After the success of their 1991 debut, “Ten,” which sold nearly 10 million copies, the Seattle group stopped making videos, shunned endorsements and shied away from almost all self-promotion. And each subsequent album proved less accessible than its predecessor. (Can you name the last two Pearl Jam records?)

Actually, no, I can’t, and I live with a card-carrying Ten Club member. But I am indeed looking forward to the new CD. I hope it’s good.