News

The Library of Congress has a new online exhibition of ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu, which once was a thriving commercial and cultural center. The exhibited manuscripts date from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, and are “remarkable artifacts important to Malian and West African culture.” You can view images from the books here. Notice that the script used in the leaves is Moghrebi (or Maghrebi), a curviform style typically used in Morocco, Algeria and elsewhere in North Africa.

Related posts:
Kenya’s Book Mobiles
Africa’s Written Tradition

LOC link via Metafilter.

Over at the Guardian, Pankaj Mishra examines the lure of a good hotel and room service for many of the past century’s famed authors, people like Nabokov (post-Lolita, of course), Hemingway, Conrad, etc.

Indeed, it remains hard to think of some writers – Coward, Somerset Maugham – without thinking of room service and the cocktail hour. Their brittle cynicism about human nature could only have been manufactured in the anonymity and solitude of a hotel room. The posturing and emptiness of the later Hemingway may have something to do with his long stints at the bar of the Gritti Hotel in Venice. Nabokov’s already well-developed ego seems to have expanded further in the isolation of his Swiss hotel, resulting in the unreadable Ada Certainly, Naipaul’s futile struggles with the Kashmiri staff at his hotel in Srinagar contributed to the bleakness of Mr Stone.

These days, though, a long stay in a hotel is out of the question for the vast majority of working writers, unless, like Mishra, they are willing to explore what Asia or Africa have to offer.

The latest issue of Granta, is now available. I was thrilled to find out that the theme is “The View From Africa,” but a tad disappointed that not a single article appears to be about North Africa. (I suppose this is because Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, and Libya are all lumped together with the Middle-East.) Still, I look forward to reading the magazine, especially considering it has such favorites as Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie and Binyavanga Wainaina.

I spent the last three weeks working on my novel (many thanks to all those who sent encouraging notes) and I’m happy to say the manuscript is now complete. Which isn’t to say it’s done. Far from it. I took some unexpected turns down the road of writing and, in the process, I discovered some interesting things about my protagonists. During the next several months, I plan to revise and polish the manuscript, though I haven’t set any deadline for myself. I just want to enjoy my time with the story and the characters.

That’s it for me for this week. I will be taking a break from blogging to focus on my novel, which I’m hoping to finish (khamsa u khmis!) by the new year. I will be back in this space the week of January 9, 2006. See ya.