Regular readers of Moorishgirl will remember that the Lit Blog Co-Op, a group of nineteen bloggers with an interest in promoting good contemporary fiction, was due to make its winter pick public today. So hop on over there and find out what book had us all excited this season–maybe you’ll consider it for your own book club, online or offline.
Over at NPR, Jackie Lyden catches up with filmmaker Kayvan Mashayekh and biographer Mehdi Amin-Razavi, both of whom have recently produced works on poet Omar Khayyam. Check it out.
Related:
The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam.
Kayvan Mashayekh’s The Keeper on IMDB.
Mehdi Amin-Razavi’s The Wine of Wisdom on Powells.com.
Elias Khoury’s Bab Al-Shams, which was published in Beirut in 1998, and subsequently translated into French (2000) and Hebrew (2002), has finally arrived in the US. Translated by Humphrey Davies, and published by Archipelago Books this week, Gate of the Sun is about Khalil, a Palestinian doctor who sits by the bedside of his friend and patient, Yunes, and reminisces about their lives, in an attempt to bring him back to consciousness. The idea of narrative as a means of survival is, of course, central to Arabic literature, beginning with The Thousand and One Nights, and its application to the context of Palestine is quite apropos.
Reviews of the novel, which was widely praised in the Arab world, Israel, and France, have begun to appear here. Writing in Harper’s magazine, John Leonard finds that
After Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun, readers can no longer pretend that Palestine is merely a fugitive state of mind, a convenient Arab myth, a traumatic tribal memory, and somebody else’s problem. This remarkable novel out of Lebanon, a skillful reshuffling of the 1001 Nights with a doctor in a refugee camp playing the part of Scheherazade, fills in the blank spaces on the Middle Eastern map in our Western heads–Palestine as history, as literature, as casualty list, as psych ward, as inferiority complez, as principality of exile.
And Lorraine Adams gives Gate of the Sun a rave review in the New York Times Book Review (This is not a misprint. We are indeed talking about a novel in translation, and about Palestine to boot, being reviewed in the NYTBR.) Here is Adams’s take:
There has been powerful fiction about Palestinians and by Palestinians, but few have held to the light the myths, tales and rumors of both Israel and the Arabs with such discerning compassion.
Those of you in DC will be able to hear Khoury read from his novel at the Palestine Center on January 18 at 6:30 pm. Write in to tell us how it went.
Related:
Ammiel Alcalay wrote about Elias Khoury for the Village Voice in 2002.
An excerpt from the novel appeared at Words Without Borders.
A film adaptation by Yousry Nasrallah was screened at Cannes in 2003.
The January issue of Words Without Borders is now available, and the focus this month is literature from Egypt. Fiction, non-fiction and poetry by Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Mahmoud Al Wardani, Na’am Al-Baz, Haggag Hassan Oddoul, Salwa Bakr, Mohamed Makhzangi, Tamer Fathy and Iman Mersal.
Here is the opening to Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s “The Veiler of All Deeds,” an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Thieves in Retirement, which will be published by Syracuse University Press later this year.
People are delighted—in the normal course of events—when they hear the news that a pious man has been caught red-handed mired in some wrongful act, whether a sin divinely prohibited, a scandalous act undermining the gravity and might of his religiosity, or an error that strips from him the cloak of infallibility to expose him as an ordinary person who doesn’t carry the halo of sainthood after all. Perhaps they react this way because his commitment to virtue has been wounding their consciences, perhaps it’s a question of seeking psychological equilibrium. It’s a relief to be able to rely on the sins of a man who appears close to God in coming to terms with their own sins which they suspect are quite appalling, and they can think optimistically about committing other wrongs that are no less atrocious. Or maybe it’s because people generally find it hard to put up with individuals who lay it on thick when it comes to virtue and commitment–their own as well as what they advise others to acquire.
Like Alaa Al-Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, the characters in Thieves in Retirement all inhabit the same apartment building, thus providing the author with a convenient cross-section of society.
The guest editor for this special issue of Words Without Borders is none other than Chip Rossetti, of the American University in Cairo Press. Read his introduction here.
Nextbook, the online magazine of Jewish culture, has started a new series of columns, to appear on Thursdays. The first is by Israeli author Etgar Keret, who writes about what it’s like to be an atheist and have a sister who converts to Orthodox Judaism.
Nineteen years ago, in a small wedding hall in Bnei Brak, my older sister died, and she now lives in the most Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. I spent a recent weekend at her house. It was my first Shabbat there. I often go to visit her in the middle of the week but that month, with all the work I had and my trips abroad, it was either Saturday or nothing. “Take care of yourself,” my wife said as I was leaving. “You’re not in such great shape now, you know. Make sure they don’t talk you into turning religious or something.” I told her she had nothing to worry about. Me, when it comes to religion, I have no God. When I’m cool I don’t need anyone, and when I’m feeling shitty and this big empty hole opens up inside me, I just know there’s never been a god that could fill it and there never will be. So even if a hundred evangelist rabbis pray for my lost soul, it won’t do them any good. I have no God, but my sister does, and I love her, so I try to show Him some respect.
Like much of Keret’s work, the essay is both funny and poignant. You can read the essay here.