Category: literary life

Here’s an interesting event for those of you in Los Angeles. Sponsored by the ever-fantastic Levantine Cultural Center, “Uncensored Iranian Voices” features readings by poet Sholeh Wolpe, author Reza Aslan, actor Shohreh Agdashloo, and author Lila Azam Zanganeh. Details:

Sunday, April 9, 2006
7 pm.
Pacific Arts Center
10469 Santa Monica Bl.
Los Angeles, 90025
Free.

The readers are all contributors to My Sister Guard Your Veil; My Brother Guard Your Eyes, a new anthology edited by Lila Azam Zanganeh, which I have on my TBR pile.

Nigerian novelist and playwright Wole Soyinka has a new memoir out, called You Must Set Forth At Dawn. I’m dying to check it out, though I have to finish a few others things first. Here’s Merle Rubin’s review in the Los Angeles Times:

“I am, contrary to all legitimately cited evidence … actually a closet glutton for tranquillity. An oft-quoted remark of mine — ‘Justice is the first condition of humanity’ — does, however, act constantly against the fulfillment of that craving for peace.”

There are many kinds of injustice that make Soyinka’s blood boil, and he describes them vividly in these pages: a resentful Nigerian soldier brutally whipping a civilian countryman for having the insolence to speak grammatical English; corrupt and bombastic leaders who betray their country’s trust; the political crime of electoral robbery. But Soyinka takes care to make sure that his blood never boils to the point of obscuring the dangers that come with resorting to aggressive, sometimes violent action. In 1965, outraged by a stolen election, he decides to make his way into a radio station to get them to substitute his own tape stating the real results for the prime minister’s tape claiming victory. “I tried to caution myself … about the dangers of unstructured violence, violence that comes to exist as a glorified end that loses all focus and control and no longer discriminates between its two principal clients positioned at either end of a living axis: Power and Freedom.” Should he take a gun? He does, for entirely pragmatic reasons, and is happy that he doesn’t have to fire it.

Rubin goes on to call the book “an indispensable document.”

A new version of The Agikuyu: Their Customs, Traditions and Folklore is to be launched this week in Nairobi. Among other things, this new edition corrects errors in the spelling of Gikuyu words.

The Deccan Herald has a brief interview with novelist and activist Arundhati Roy. A brief snippet:

“I remember after winning the Booker, I was interviewed by English media. They said it’s a tribute to Empire since your book is in English. I resented that, it was like attributing a child to a rapist father,” Roy says.

More of the interview here.

Over at the Independent, Caroline Phillips wonders, “Is there such a thing as feminine writing?” How often do we have to discuss the same bloody topics in the literary pages? That’s what I’d like to know.

So with all the hoopla about the BBC Arabic service, I decided to check out their site. They have world news, local news, business, tech, sports, opinion…but no art or culture page. Because, you know, it’s not like Arabs read books or watch movies or listen to music or anything.