MENA Book Club

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

So I've been taking time out at the University Library to read these books that were mentioned.

I read the the CALIPH'S HOUSE. Took about 10 hours and was entirely pleasurable easy read. What a beautiful insight into Morocoo culture, people, tradition and personalities. I loved it!

The Lemon Tree is completely lost at my library and I am sad about that.

I looked for "The Great War for Civilization" by Robert Fisk but the Library curisously doesn't carry it.

I checked out L’Étranger by Albert Camus to read.

I did read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho in about four hours. It is going in my all time favorites forever and ever! It's so true to everything I know and believe to be true and hold dear to my heart.

I did look at the Political Science Syllubus but got overwhelmed for now with my own POLS classes and I did look up Joseph Lumbard to see if his books were at our library. lol. They aren't.

I did read TAJAR DJAOUT "The Last summer of Reason" and it took about four hours. It wasn't as easy a read as The Alchemist or Caliph's House because it used elaborate desciptions and big words that I had to look up often in the dictionary. I did however enjoy it.

I also checked out the Cresent and look forward to reading that soon.

I am intrigued by the popularity of The Kite Runner. It's checked out till May at my Library and I saw it for sale at Starbucks today. That is the first time I have seen Starbucks selling a book! It is certainly on my list to read now.

Thank you everyone for your recommendations! Keep them coming. This is so nurturing for my soul. ((Sigh))

Your local resident book worm college gal,

Olivia

[MrsAmera 41]

Olivia, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns are two of the most well written pieces of English prose in my opinion. Even if you aren't interested in Afghanistan or the material they are remarkably well written. I read The Kite Runner (the entire thing) on the train between Casablanca and Marrakech (3 1/2 hrs) and devoured A Thousand Splendid Suns in an afternoon. You won't be disapointed I promise. We had started a bookclub that kind of fell apart but were reading Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali -- it was good, and I'm looking for the other books in the 4 part series. Welcome back btw

[~Jackie~ 30]

I miss the book club---I never did finish the pomagranate book, and I regret it. Count me in if you want to revive the club for another book!

I just finished Once in a Promised Land by Laila Halaby. It is about a Jordanian couple living in America during the 9/11 attacks.

Jackie

[Beauty for Ashes 257]

So I've been taking time out at the University Library to read these books that were mentioned.

I read the the CALIPH'S HOUSE. Took about 10 hours and was entirely pleasurable easy read. What a beautiful insight into Morocoo culture, people, tradition and personalities. I loved it!

The Lemon Tree is completely lost at my library and I am sad about that.

I looked for "The Great War for Civilization" by Robert Fisk but the Library curisously doesn't carry it.

I checked out L’Étranger by Albert Camus to read.

I did read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho in about four hours. It is going in my all time favorites forever and ever! It's so true to everything I know and believe to be true and hold dear to my heart.

I did look at the Political Science Syllubus but got overwhelmed for now with my own POLS classes and I did look up Joseph Lumbard to see if his books were at our library. lol. They aren't.

I did read TAJAR DJAOUT "The Last summer of Reason" and it took about four hours. It wasn't as easy a read as The Alchemist or Caliph's House because it used elaborate desciptions and big words that I had to look up often in the dictionary. I did however enjoy it.

I also checked out the Cresent and look forward to reading that soon.

I am intrigued by the popularity of The Kite Runner. It's checked out till May at my Library and I saw it for sale at Starbucks today. That is the first time I have seen Starbucks selling a book! It is certainly on my list to read now.

Thank you everyone for your recommendations! Keep them coming. This is so nurturing for my soul. ((Sigh))

Your local resident book worm college gal,

Olivia

Olivia if you send me your address in pm I ll send you a book I collaborated on with an Algerian publisher about the colonial period in Algeria

TAHAR DJAOUTs last summer of reason is particularly sad because he died shortly after writing it. He was shot in the head by islamists and drug through the streets and his limbs torn off. He was a Kabilye ( the people of Algeria who have a byzantine, vandal, berber and some think Jewish background as well as berber) and he was not an atheist but he was strongly against islamic rule in Algeria and was many of the intellectuals murdered by radical islamists.

The director of Oran's theater was killed by islamists as well for promoting music and theatre. So were 50 female reporters, nuns,teachers, intellectuals, psychologists, writers ,poets.

Tahar Djaout (1954-1993) was an Algerian journalist, poet, and fiction writer. He was assassinated by the rebel Armed Islamic Group because of his support of secularism and opposition to what he considered fanaticism. He was attacked on May 26, 1993, as he was leaving his home in Bainem, Algeria. He died on June 2, after lying in a coma for a week. One of his attackers professed that he was murdered because he "wielded a fearsome pen that could have an effect on Islamic sectors." He was born in Azeffoun, in the relatively secular Kabylie region. After his death the BBC made a documentary about him entitled 'Shooting the Writer', introduced by Salman Rushdie

about last summer of reason

The Last Summer of Reason

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The Last Summer of Reason is a novel by Algerian writer Tahar Djaout. It was originally written and published in French. The English translation was produced by Marjolijn de Jagar, and published by Ruminator books, 2001. Foreword by Wole Soyinka. The novel was published posthumously.

[edit] Plot

Boualem Yekker is a bookseller in a country probably modelled on Algeria. His home is firmly in the grip of religious fundamentalists, but only recently: it was once a republic, but now it is a "Community in the Faith". Djaout presents readers with a terrifying world of religious fundamentalism comparable to Orwell's 1984, but substituting a religious ditatorship for a purely political one.

At first Yekker is only on the periphery of danger. He is "neither elegant nor talented", which puts him out of the spotlight: "what is persecuted above all, and more than people's opinions, is their ability to create and propagate beauty." Still, Yekker is a purveyor of these outrageous "idea- and beauty-filled objects" known as books, so he doesn't fit in too well in this new, retrograde society.

Business isn't exactly booming, of course. Touchingly Djaout describes Yekker's brief moments of hope when he sees people gazing in the shop window. But there is hardly a market for the sorts of books he has any longer. One acquaintance, Ali Elbouliga, still comes to while away time there. Otherwise, Yekker remains largely alone in his bookish world -- and the books ultimately prove almost as much a burden as a solace.

Family life also gets more complicated when his daughter turns on him. "The illness of fanaticism had attacked her." She is transformed, "covered with superior certainties".

Yekker tries to continue to live his life in the manner he is accustomed to, but there is no escape from the encroaching fanaticism. It crushes all opposition. Any semblance of rationality is done away with. Even weather forecasts are banned, as if these called some all-mighty's grand plan (and his power) into question. (What a pathetic god it must be they're protecting, if he can be threatened by mortals' barely educated guesses at tomorrow's weather; doesn't the fact that the meteorologists barely ever get it right instead reinforce the idea of divine omnipotence?)

Imagination is dulled, "the world has become aphasic, opaque, and sullen; it is wearing mourning clothes." Books "constitute the safest refuge against this world of horror" all around Yekker, but the books are also a danger to him. Eventually they must make place for "the one, the irremovable Book of resigned certainty."

The threats against Yekker mount. What is, at first, almost harmless child's play intensifies to very real danger. Might conquers right:

They have understood the danger in words, all the words they cannot manage to domesticate and anesthetize. For words, put end to end, bring doubt and change. Words above all must not conceive of the utopia of another form of truth, of unsuspected paths, of another place of thought.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Summer_of_Reason"

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

Yes there was an epilouge that explain he was killed before the book was finished and that it was left nearly in it's entirety with few revisions. However, it didn't give the details of his grizzly demise. While reading it I recall seeing parallel worlds from his book and from the book "Brave New World" or even George Orwell's "1984". They all seem to go to the extreme extent of how they picture goverment could be. It also made me think of Libya and the control the government has currently over their media and freedom of speech, and expression through music and art.

I would love to read your book!

Oh also I picked up a book that wasn't on the list. It's called, "Out of Egypt". The title got my attention because of that movie "Out of Africa" and you know the Egypt thing.

I just started on that book but am kinda bored by it plus the Holiday has provided many distractions. I also have about 60 pages left in Thomas Friedman's Book "From Beirut to Jerusalm". It's taken a long time to read. The text is smaller that your average book and it's pretty condensed details about the whose who and the whats what.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Olivia

So I've been taking time out at the University Library to

I did read TAJAR DJAOUT "The Last summer of Reason" and it took about four hours. It wasn't as easy a read as The Alchemist or Caliph's House because it used elaborate desciptions and big words that I had to look up often in the dictionary. I did however enjoy it.

Olivia

Olivia if you send me your address in pm I ll send you a book I collaborated on with an Algerian publisher about the colonial period in Algeria

TAHAR DJAOUTs last summer of reason is particularly sad because he died shortly after writing it. He was shot in the head by islamists and drug through the streets and his limbs torn off. He was a Kabilye ( the people of Algeria who have a byzantine, vandal, berber and some think Jewish background as well as berber) and he was not an atheist but he was strongly against islamic rule in Algeria and was many of the intellectuals murdered by radical islamists.

The director of Oran's theater was killed by islamists as well for promoting music and theatre. So were 50 female reporters, nuns,teachers, intellectuals, psychologists, writers ,poets.

Tahar Djaout (1954-1993) was an Algerian journalist, poet, and fiction writer. He was assassinated by the rebel Armed Islamic Group because of his support of secularism and opposition to what he considered fanaticism. He was attacked on May 26, 1993, as he was leaving his home in Bainem, Algeria. He died on June 2, after lying in a coma for a week. One of his attackers professed that he was murdered because he "wielded a fearsome pen that could have an effect on Islamic sectors." He was born in Azeffoun, in the relatively secular Kabylie region. After his death the BBC made a documentary about him entitled 'Shooting the Writer', introduced by Salman Rushdie

about last summer of reason

The Last Summer of Reason

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The Last Summer of Reason is a novel by Algerian writer Tahar Djaout. It was originally written and published in French. The English translation was produced by Marjolijn de Jagar, and published by Ruminator books, 2001. Foreword by Wole Soyinka. The novel was published posthumously.

[edit] Plot

Boualem Yekker is a bookseller in a country probably modelled on Algeria. His home is firmly in the grip of religious fundamentalists, but only recently: it was once a republic, but now it is a "Community in the Faith". Djaout presents readers with a terrifying world of religious fundamentalism comparable to Orwell's 1984, but substituting a religious ditatorship for a purely political one.

At first Yekker is only on the periphery of danger. He is "neither elegant nor talented", which puts him out of the spotlight: "what is persecuted above all, and more than people's opinions, is their ability to create and propagate beauty." Still, Yekker is a purveyor of these outrageous "idea- and beauty-filled objects" known as books, so he doesn't fit in too well in this new, retrograde society.

Business isn't exactly booming, of course. Touchingly Djaout describes Yekker's brief moments of hope when he sees people gazing in the shop window. But there is hardly a market for the sorts of books he has any longer. One acquaintance, Ali Elbouliga, still comes to while away time there. Otherwise, Yekker remains largely alone in his bookish world -- and the books ultimately prove almost as much a burden as a solace.

Family life also gets more complicated when his daughter turns on him. "The illness of fanaticism had attacked her." She is transformed, "covered with superior certainties".

Yekker tries to continue to live his life in the manner he is accustomed to, but there is no escape from the encroaching fanaticism. It crushes all opposition. Any semblance of rationality is done away with. Even weather forecasts are banned, as if these called some all-mighty's grand plan (and his power) into question. (What a pathetic god it must be they're protecting, if he can be threatened by mortals' barely educated guesses at tomorrow's weather; doesn't the fact that the meteorologists barely ever get it right instead reinforce the idea of divine omnipotence?)

Imagination is dulled, "the world has become aphasic, opaque, and sullen; it is wearing mourning clothes." Books "constitute the safest refuge against this world of horror" all around Yekker, but the books are also a danger to him. Eventually they must make place for "the one, the irremovable Book of resigned certainty."

The threats against Yekker mount. What is, at first, almost harmless child's play intensifies to very real danger. Might conquers right:

They have understood the danger in words, all the words they cannot manage to domesticate and anesthetize. For words, put end to end, bring doubt and change. Words above all must not conceive of the utopia of another form of truth, of unsuspected paths, of another place of thought.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Summer_of_Reason"

[MrsAmera 41]

I would be willing and interested in re-starting the book club if others are up for it (jackie that's you). PM me with your e-mails and i'll set it up. I'll make sure to add a list of all the books we've talked about in this thread so far.

[chasnik 0]

I would be interested in joining a book club!!! I read the Caliphs house found it entertaining. Read The Kite Runner and A thousand splendid suns and cried and was totally moved by both. I bought The lemon tree and The alchemist yesterday...hopefully start reading tomorrow. So if the invite would be open to anyone Im in!!!

[MrsAmera 41]

Anyone else interested?

[allousa 1]

Count me in as well.

I mentioned that I was reading Robert Fisk's book "Conquest of the Middle East", but I have hit the pause button on that to begin reading "Paris 1919". I forget now about how I stumbled on this book, but it talks about the 6 month period in Paris where many heads of state came together to essentially put the world on a chopping block. Supposedly this book chronicles the what began such conflict in MENA and also the rest of the world. I cannot verify this to be true as I have only just started reading. I will let you all know.

I did just finish reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns" over the holiday break. It was a quick read and enjoyable, but it did not move me as much as "Kite Runner" did. "Kite Runner" is undoubtedly in my top ten favorite books of all time. Forgetting the whole ME cultural references, it is the most incredible story.

I will have to add "Once in a Promised Land" to my list. Hicham and I were married and he was in the States when 9/11 happened. The day that it happened, a girl at Hicham's school spit at him as she was walking by. Several of my co-workers knew that I was married to an Arab and they didn't speak to me for several days. This first couple of days we just sat on the couch holding each other and crying because we knew that things would never be the same. For weeks, I had to hear such awful comments made about Arabs and how the ME should be turned to glass. It was awful. Hicham and I wouldn't leave home for weeks and weeks after 9/11 happened. We were really frightened by people's reactions. I am anxious to read this book to see how it compares with how we felt.

[*JG* 2]

Not MENA really but having to do with similar culture...The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Egypt related...I'm Happier to Know You by Jeanne M. Eck and Fatwa:Living With a Death Threat by Jacky Trevane (I heard this is a good one but haven't read it yet...waiting for my copy to be shipped in 6 weeks)

OMG....The Kite Runner and A Thousand Spendid Suns....I second that a thousand times. I LOVED both those books. Wondering if The Kite Runner movie will stand up to the book.

[sarah and hicham 3]

Olivia, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns are two of the most well written pieces of English prose in my opinion. Even if you aren't interested in Afghanistan or the material they are remarkably well written. I read The Kite Runner (the entire thing) on the train between Casablanca and Marrakech (3 1/2 hrs) and devoured A Thousand Splendid Suns in an afternoon. You won't be disapointed I promise. We had started a bookclub that kind of fell apart but were reading Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali -- it was good, and I'm looking for the other books in the 4 part series. Welcome back btw

Both of those books are wonderful.

[Beauty for Ashes 257]

Olivia I sent you two. One is a pictorial history that I did with an Algerian publisher and I think you will really like the other one. They were published in 2006 in Algeria. I think you will really like them. You will get a kick out of the Algerian ISBN at the back. Its interesting looking.

Another writer that is amazing is FRANTZ or FRANZ FANON. He was a psychologist hired by the French that detailed the torture by the French of the Algerians.

I saw that you mentioned Albert Camus... I would recommend EXILE IN THE KINGDOM because its an easier read than THE STRANGER... He was from Oran, Algeria and was a pied noir or black foot... He was a character.

The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre, first published 1961) is Frantz Fanon's most famous work, written during and regarding the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule. As a psychiatrist, Fanon explored the psychological effect of colonisation on the psyche of a nation as well as its broader implications for building a movement for decolonization.

A controversial introduction to the text by Jean-Paul Sartre presents the thesis as an advocacy of violence[1] (which Sartre has also examined in his then-recent Critique of Dialectical Reason). This focus derives from the book’s opening chapter ‘Concerning Violence’ which is a caustic indictment of colonialism and its legacy. It discusses violence as a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation. It also details the violence of colonialism as a process itself. The interpretation of the text as a promotion of violence is argued as a limited way of approaching the text fueled essentially by Sartre’s opening comments.[2]

Further reading can find a thorough critique of nationalism and imperialism while also developing to cover areas such as mental health and the role of intellectuals in revolutionary situations. Fanon goes into great detail explaining that revolutionary groups should look to the lumpenproletariat for the force needed to expel colonists. The lumpenproletariat in traditional Marxist theories are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness. Fanon uses the term to refer to those inhabitants of colonized countries who are not involved in industrial production, particularly peasants living outside the cities. He argues that only this group, unlike the industrial proletariat, has sufficient independence from the colonists to successfully make a revolution against them.

Also important is Fanon's view of the role of language and how it molds the position of "natives", or those victimized by colonization. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth has become a handbook for any and all political leaders faced with any type of decolonization. It is still read in the Pentagon today as advice on dealing with the conflict in Iraq.[3] There are two different English translations in publication, the most recent, by Richard Philcox, being better accepted.

The original title of the book is an allusion to the opening words of The Internationale.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Well I have absolutely no respect for Thomas Freidman and his endless denigrations of Arab people in general, his repetition of outright lies and deliberate misinformation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or his shameless shilling for the Iraq War. He is a fabulously wealthy (thanks to his heiress wife) egotistical self-promoter, and he uses his prominent position as a so-called "journalist" for the New York Times to proselytize the neo-con agenda and a complete bias in favor of Israeli policies, even to go as far as to defend Israeli war crimes. This ####### really believes his own hype as the self-styled "most important columnist in the world."

Here's more on what I'm talking about:

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2003/herman1103.html

Actually, there is a much better read with the same title "From Beirut to Jerusalem" -- this one by Swee Chai Ang, describing the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

I'm nearly finished with the second half of his book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" and it's the part where he is in Jerusalem and I am starting to see what you mean. Even some parts I am offened at but none the less I will finish this book with 60 or less pages to go.

In other news there is a mena book club on yahoo if anyone else wants to join! We're just starting to read Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq.

Olivia

Well I have absolutely no respect for Thomas Freidman and his endless denigrations of Arab people in general, his repetition of outright lies and deliberate misinformation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or his shameless shilling for the Iraq War. He is a fabulously wealthy (thanks to his heiress wife) egotistical self-promoter, and he uses his prominent position as a so-called "journalist" for the New York Times to proselytize the neo-con agenda and a complete bias in favor of Israeli policies, even to go as far as to defend Israeli war crimes. This ####### really believes his own hype as the self-styled "most important columnist in the world."

Here's more on what I'm talking about:

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2003/herman1103.html

Actually, there is a much better read with the same title "From Beirut to Jerusalem" -- this one by Swee Chai Ang, describing the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

This is a post to see whose intersted in participating in the MENA summer book club. So far Jackie, Amanda, and I are the ones that gave it a go for the summer. It would be nice to have more than three people so if youre interested in particitpating this summer please post here.

Also:

We have a list of books to chose from.

What books are you interested in reading?