News

The New York Times has a travel piece on Marrakesh, which I fear will result in even more tourists crowding the city. When we were there last spring, I saw a moronic British tourist sticking his ass out of one of the windows of the Ben Youssef Medersa. The floors of the seminary’s student rooms were damaged by all the activity, and one of the guides kept touching the exquisite plaster work in the inner courtyard with his bare hands. (The photo above gives you a small idea of what you’ll see on any given day at the famous medersa.) The tile floors at the Bahia palace were completely falling apart, and people had no regard for the artifacts. The Menebhi palace was also starting to show signs of wear. Sad.

This week, Georgetown University and the Moroccan Embassy are co-organizing a conference in Washington, D.C. on “Morocco: Recent Trends and Future Prospects.” I will be doing a panel on Moroccan literature with Abdelfettah Kilito and Mokhtar Gambou on Thursday afternoon. You can view the schedule here and here. If you live in the area, do come by and say hello. The event is open to the public.

Critical Mass, the blog of the National Books Critics Circle, has a fairly regular feature called “The Critical Library,” which, as the title suggests, asks critics to name their favorite volumes on criticism. Today, J. M. Coetzee contributes his list, so take a look.

You want to know what my own critical library–for the English language anyway–would look like?

The Complete Review‘s Michael Orthofer leads a book club discussion of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Mandarins for Words Without Borders. I haven’t read anything by Akutagawa, not even Rashomon, upon which Kurosawa’s famed film is based, so the background information that Michael offers is really helpful. I’m looking forward to reading the book along with the group.

The Los Angeles Times has a sneak peek at Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronneaud’s film adaptation of Persepolis. I was fortunate enough to see the movie at the Internazionale Festival in Ferrara last month, and it was beautiful. It opens here on December 25.