Bali Photos (1)

Here are some of my photos from Ubud. More to come. Sorry they are not great.

Am also trying to snaffle a few from friends who took pics on my behalf when my camera went walkies for two days.

Egyptian novelist, and one of the most respected writers in the Arab world, Bahaa Taher, was one of the big names at the festival. Bahaa won the Booker Prize for Arabic fiction earlier this year. (Do read Maya Jaggi's article about him in the Guardian.)

Chinese author Lijia Zhang worked for 10 years in a factory producing intercontinental ballistic missiles is Nanjing before becoming a journalist and writer. Her first book carries the ironic title Socialism is Great! (Read an extract on the New York Times website.) I have great hopes to coax this lady to KL!

Our Preeta paying gazillions of rupiah for a book.

Chiew-Siah with Chris Hanley (one of the founders of the Byron Bay Festival in Australia) who moderated the session called A Long Way From Home.

Shamini Flint launched her latest novel for children, The Seeds of Time about two children's quest to save the planet. All I remember of the event was the extremely potent cocktail made from local hooch. (If the picture is wobbly, you know the reason!).

The Passing of a Palestinian Hero

It was as early as 1950 that the poet first realized how the poem can be “a threat to the sword” as he was harassed by the Israeli military governor for writing and reciting poetry that expressed his strong sense of Arab and Palestinian identity.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning on Sunday after Mahmoud Darwish, the poet who gave a voice to the Palestinian people died aged 67 in Houston, Texas, after complications with heart surgery.

Darwish was considered one of the great contemporary Arab poets, and will be given a state funeral today, the first since Yasir Arafat died in 2004.

The words above come from a profile on his website. There are also articles about him in the New York Times, and in the Guardian. Some of his poems in translation can be found here.

(Pic from NYT shows crowds mourning in Ramallah.)

Rawi Hage Wins IMPAC

And this year's Impac Dublin Literary Award goes to ... Canadian author Rawi Hage for his debut novel De Niro's Game.

In the judges citation, the novel is described as :

... a powerful, stark yet lyrical and compassionate book (in which) luck is a central element. The title refers to the game of chance - to the death-defying game of Russian Roulette played by DeNiro in the film The Deer Hunter. Hage’s characters find themselves in a very different yet equally extreme situation - caught in the civil war raging in Beirut in the 1980’s. Hage’s writing allows the reader a shocking intimacy with the personal impact of such conflicts. Through the fate of his anti-heroes, George and Bassam, he shows how war can envelope lives – how one doesn’t have a choice in such situations. Concepts of guilt and innocence are left to flounder in the hail of bombs and the struggle for survival. Life itself becomes a game with no real winners, only scarred survivors whose estrangement is deeper than any bullet wound, and whose future seems darker than their blacked out city.

Hage was born in Beirut in 1964, and grew up in Lebanon and Cyprus. He studied photography in New York, and in 1991 moved to Montreal. His novel was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2006 Governor General's Award for English fiction and won several smaller prizes. Not bad for an author writing in his third language!

He's also a successful photographer and his work has been acquired by the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec.

More at The Toronto Star and The Guardian.

Books from the Arab World

Arabic literature faces many challenges including censorship, bureaucracy, and the problems of reaching a wider market. But here are signs that it has never been more vibrant. In the Guardian today authors and critics give their views.

This comment from Palestinian poet and writer Mourid Barghouti should give us all pause for thought :

Arabic literature, both classical and modern, is almost absent from the world stage. The dominant culture of our times, western culture, has not seen other languages, discourses and civilisations as equally worthy approaches to the world. We'll reach nowhere if the concept of "universality" is not re-examined. No western writer questions his or her universality; it is the Arabs, the Africans and the Asians who should aspire to reach it, through translation. Translation being a chance, a favour, a medal, a stamp of recognition and a password to open the space for the lucky newcomers.

If you are interested in finding out more, do also check out Arab World Books.

Books from the Arab world is also the market focus of the London Book Fair this year, and the British Council is also providing a shop window for Arabic Writers.

Postscript (25/4/08) :

Boyd Tonkin in the Independent also looks at books from the Arabic world and the problems faced by authors and publishers.

Extracting Stories

Many authors have to work around the day job, and it is isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Stephanie Merritt in the Observer interviews Egyptian novelist Alaa al Aswany and discovers the practising dentist draws inspiration (as well as teeth!) from his patients! He gets up at 6a.m. and writes for four hours before going to his dental clinic.

My father was also a novelist and a lawyer. Even Naguib Mahfouz worked for the government until the age of retirement. But now it's not about the money. I work less but I would never give it up because my clinic is my window. I open the window to see people and talk to them and I believe this is very important from the human aspect and the professional aspect as a writer. Patients tell me about their lives, I give them my time, so it's not just about the dental issues. I do care about people and it's very dangerous for a writer to shut himself away.

The Yacoubian Building, his second novel, has been a best-seller across the Arab world and translated into 17 languages. It has also been filmed.

His latest novel is Chicago, set in the city where he studied and follows the lives of a group of Arab immigrants.

Naguib Mahfouz Dies

Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz passed away on August 30th, aged 94, following a fall. The Egyptian author was exceptionally prolific wrote and wrote 40 novels and short story collections, as well as screenplays and plays. He was the first writer from the Arab world to win the Nobel, and it propelled him to international fame in 1988, although many of his works are still banned in many Middle Eastern countries.

The Guardian pays tribute to the man here and here, and John Ezard remembers:

a modest man with a ready smile and that sense of humour for which Egyptians are famous

Postscript:

I liked Greenbottle's post about discovering Mahfouz.

A feature about Mahfouz from the New York Times.

Writers - What Did You Do In The War?

What happens when writers find themselves caught up in the horrors of war?

Richard Lea in the Guardian checks in with authors on both sides of the current conflict in South Lebanon, including Lebanese novelists Elias Khoury and Hassan Daoud, Israeli author Orly Castel-Bloom and writer of surreal short-fiction Etgar Keret, and Palestinian author Adania Shibli.

Unsurprising verdict: war isn't very good for writing. My favourite comment comes from Castel-Bloom:

I used to write books they called post-modern, but now it is pure realism.

Meanwhile, Nobel prize winner Gunter Grass's shock revelation that he once served in Adolf Hitler's Waffen SS force has ignited a firestorm of criticism, writes Tony Paterson in the Independent,with some quarters demanding that he return the award. Grass claims that writing his new autobiography Peeling the Onion (supposed to be published next month, but I believe it has already been launched) finally gave him the opportunity to face up to his Nazi past.

Also well worth reading on the case is this post on the Done with Mirrors blog (via Tailrank).

The Nigerian Biafran war provides the background to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new novel, which is dedicated to the grandparents Adichi never knew. Adichi's highly praised first novel Purple Hibiscus was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2004 and won the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize. The novelist is profiled by Christina Patterson in the Independent. Although writing of war at second-hand, Adichie clearly gets things right. Patterson describes Half A Yellow Sun as:

... a magnificent novel, packed with memorable characters and their different worlds. Adichie's own childhood took place entirely within the bounds of a university campus, but she captures village life, and the cocktail-drinking coteries of the super-rich, as if they too were part of the fabric of her daily life. She also captures the horrors of war: the constant upheaval, the hunger and the brutalising fear that causes ordinary people ... to take part in acts of casual brutality.

In case we need reminding.