Category: literary life

Summer Reading List

Last Friday, Annie Reed, blogging at Maud Newton’s, requested summer reading suggestions. I haven’t sent mine in yet, mostly because what I’ll be reading this summer is probably not going to be the kind of book you take to the beach or the pool. I’m trying to focus on books that will be of use to me with my current novel, for example by helping me to understand certain aspects of political Islam (and, more broadly, the way that religious/political ideologies gain followers.)

For example, I plan to read Fawaz Gerges’ Journey of the Jihadist, which is based on extensive interviews with militants, and chronicles one man’s descent–and possibly his return from–Jihadist ideology. (I do not recommend taking this book with you on the airplane to whatever faraway destination you’re headed to.)

I am also planning to read Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah. I didn’t like the excerpt from the book that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly a while back, but I am curious how Bowden will address the co-opting by the Ayatollah of the students who took over the American embassy. We’ll see.

Then there is Ismail Kadare’s The Successor. Several discerning readers, including my husband, have recommended this book very highly. I haven’t read Kadare in years–since my teens, I think–and I have never read him in English. So this should be a very special treat.

Another book that came highly recommended–from readers as far away as my hometown of Rabat, Morocco–is Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française. Everyone is praising it to the high heavens. I hope it lives up to the recommendations.

Can you believe I haven’t yet gotten to Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss? I had just started it a couple of months ago when I was assigned something to review and had to set it aside. So I’m hoping to get into it for good this time.

Every summer I try to read older books–classics, really–that I’ve missed out on, and correct my ignorance. This year, I’m hoping to finally read Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear, Buchi Emecheta’s Head Above Water and Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala.

And of course summer is also a good time to check out galleys of fall 2006 releases. The ones I have set aside to read are Leila Aboulela’s The Translator, Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun and Ahmed Alaidy’s Being Abbas El-Abd.



Ramadan Wins Court Case

Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan, who had been denied a U.S. visa that would have enabled him to start teaching at Notre Dame last year, has just won a court case that essentially forces the government to process his application. The case was brought on by Professor Ramadan in conjunction with PEN American center, the ACLU, the American Academy of Religion, and the American Association of University Professors, to challenge a provision of the PATRIOT Act that had barred him from entering the U.S. to teach or to take part in PEN’s World Voices festival.

U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty ruled that:

while the Executive may exclude an alien for almost any reason, it cannot do so solely because the Executive disagrees with the content of the alien’s speech and therefore wants to prevent the alien from sharing this speech with a willing American audience.

A good day’s work. You can read all about it on PEN’s website.




Djebbar In L’Académie

Assia Djebbar, who earlier this year was elected to the Académie Française, has officially joined ‘Les Immortels’ at a ceremony last Thursday. She will take over fauteuil numéro 5 from Georges Revel. You can read her (very moving) speech here.

L’Afrique du Nord, du temps de l’Empire français, – comme le reste de l’Afrique de la part de ses coloniaux anglais, portugais ou belges – a subi, un siècle et demi durant, dépossession de ses richesses naturelles, déstructuration de ses assises sociales, et, pour l’Algérie, exclusion dans l’enseignement de ses deux langues identitaires, le berbère séculaire, et la langue arabe dont la qualité poétique ne pouvait alors, pour moi, être perçue que dans les versets coraniques qui me restent chers.

Mesdames et Messieurs, le colonialisme vécu au jour le jour par nos ancêtres, sur quatre générations au moins, a été une immense plaie ! Une plaie dont certains ont rouvert récemment la mémoire, trop légèrement et par dérisoire calcul électoraliste. En 1950 déjà, dans son “Discours sur le Colonialisme” le grand poète Aimé Césaire avait montré, avec le souffle puissant de sa parole, comment les guerres coloniales en Afrique et en Asie ont, en fait, “décivilisé” et “ensauvagé”, dit-il, l’Europe. (…)

La langue française, la vôtre, Mesdames et Messieurs, devenue la mienne, tout au moins en écriture, le français donc est lieu de creusement de mon travail, espace de ma méditation ou de ma rêverie, cible de mon utopie peut-être, je dirai même ; tempo de ma respiration, au jour le jour : ce que je voudrais esquisser, en cet instant où je demeure silhouette dressée sur votre seuil.

Je me souviens, l’an dernier, en Juin 2005, le jour où vous m’avez élue à votre Académie, aux journalistes qui quêtaient ma réaction, j’avais répondu que “J’étais contente pour la francophonie du Maghreb”. La sobriété s’imposait, car m’avait saisie la sensation presque physique que vos portes ne s’ouvraient pas pour moi seule, ni pour mes seuls livres, mais pour les ombres encore vives de mes confrères – écrivains, journalistes, intellectuels, femmes et hommes d’Algérie qui, dans la décennie quatre-vingt-dix ont payé de leur vie le fait d’écrire, d’exposer leurs idées ou tout simplement d’enseigner… en langue française.

Depuis, grâce à Dieu, mon pays cautérise peu à peu ses blessures.



‘Faith & Reason’ on PBS

As has been widely reported, Bill Moyers is doing a series of interviews on faith and reason for PBS. His first guest was Salman Rushdie, and I was lucky enough to catch the show on TV the other day. Rushdie’s answers were, as usual, quite thoughtful, and I agreed with much of what he said (though I disagreed with a couple of his positions, particularly in regards to women.) Other interviewees will include Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, David Grossman and Jeanette Winterson, and the shows will be aired throughout the summer.




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