Category: literary life

Literary Arts is hosting novelists Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt, as part of its Portland Arts and Lectures series. The event will take place on January 24th. Details and tickets here.

The National Book Critics Circle has announced finalists for its award. In the fiction category, the shortlist includes:

• E.L. Doctorow, The March
• Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
• Andrea Levy, Small Island
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
• William Vollman, Europe Central

In general non-fiction, the finalists are:

• Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
• Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
• Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
• Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
• Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War

In the “autobiography” category, Joan Didion was, of course, nominated, as were Orhan Pamuk (for Istanbul) and Vikram Seth (for Two Lives).

As has been widely reported, Oprah Winfrey’s new book club selection is Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir (or novel, depending on whom you’re talking to) of his life during the Holocaust. The choice of another creative non-fiction book has already led some people to wonder if Oprah’s defense of James Frey was “pre-emptive”. Meanwhile, at the New York Times, Edward Wyatt points out:

The selection of such a high-profile memoir seems likely to extend the debate over the nature of memoir and truth that flared last week around Ms. Winfrey’s previous book club choice, “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey. After an investigative Web site reported that substantial parts of Mr. Frey’s account were contradicted by the police and legal records, Mr. Frey admitted that he embellished certain parts of his life.

Ms. Winfrey defended him, however, saying that “the underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me.”

Read it all here.

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.