Category Archives: Literature

Twain on the New Year

Humor and Satire, Literature

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Mark Twain did not say that, but consider his greeting from the 19th to the 20th century, published in the New York Herald on December 30, 1900:

I bring you the stately nation named Christendom, returning, bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking glass.

Who Owns the Holy Land?

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Humor and Satire, Literature, Palestine

As another year draws to a close, it is hard not to think in larger terms of the course of the last century. The world has seen two world wars and far too many atrocities since 1908 to think of our technological and commercially driven age as golden. But in it all there has been humor. Believe it or not, the American writer Mark Twain was still alive one hundred years ago. His greatest books belong to the century before, from the mother of all Holy Land travelogues, Innocents Abroad, to Huckleberry Finn and his adventurous friend Tom Sawyer. Surely one of the greatest humorists ever, Mark Twain did more than tell funny stories. His work survives in part because it uses humor to remind us of the unfairness and unwavering mundaneness of life.

In Tom Sawyer Abroad Twain offers a vivid critique of the kind of Orientalism that Edward Said rightly views as a style for dominating the Orient. Continue reading Who Owns the Holy Land? →

The Seller of Sweet Words

Books You Should Read, Egypt, Literature

[Note: The most notable, at least in the Nobel laureate sense, Arab writer of literature is the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, who passed away in 2006 . Among his many novels, several of which are available in English translation by Doubleday Press, is the classic “Midaq Alley”, written more than six decades ago, but still a vibrant testament to the universality of human foibles in a literary mirror. Below is one of my favorite character descriptions in the novel. If you have not yet read “Midaq Alley”, then do so as soon as you can, and taste the sweet words (even in translation) for yourself.]

Many things combine to show that Midaq Alley is one of the gems of times gone by and that it once shone forth like a flashing star in the history of Cairo. Which Cairo do I mean? That of the Fatimids, the Mamlukes, or the Sultans? Only God and the archaeologists know the answer to that, but in any case, the alley is certainly an ancient relic and a precious one. How could it be otherwise with its stone-paved surface leading directly to the historic Sanadiqiyya Street. And then there is its café known as Kirsha’s. Its walls decorated with multicolored arabesques, now crumbling, give off strong odors from the medicines of olden times, smells which have now become the spices and folk cures of today and tomorrow…

Although Midaq Alley lives in almost complete isolation from all surrounding activity, it clamors with a distinctive and personal life of its own. Fundamentally, and basically, its roots connect with life as a whole and yet, at the same time, it retains a number of the secrets of a world now past. Continue reading The Seller of Sweet Words →

The Sultan’s Seal

Books You Should Read, Literature, Turkey

“Your brush is the bowstring that brings the wild goose down.”

(Reviewed by Jana Kraus MAR 22, 2006)

Jenny White, an anthropologist and the author of numerous nonfiction works on Turkish society and politics, has written a real winner with her debut novel, The Sultan’s Seal. A historical mystery with a bit of romance thrown in, this book makes for an unputdownable read. Ms. White paints a remarkably vivid portrait of life in 19th century Turkey, from the luxurious sultan’s palaces to the most squalid slums of Istanbul, and writes intelligently of the political turmoil of the period.

Set in the ancient city “Stanbul” on the Bosphorus in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, (1886), political intrigue, espionage and social upheaval are rife, even in the sultan’s harem. “Young Turks,” a reformist and strongly nationalist group of men, forced the restoration of the constitution of 1876. This new generation of Ottoman political thinkers were convinced that the Empire would never be truly modernized until it had adopted a democratic government and a constitution rather than undiluted power in the hands of the sultan. Gathering secretly in Istanbul, then in exile in Europe, “these reformers propagandized against the governments of Ali Pasha then, when Ali died in 1871, against the increasingly autocratic rule of Sultan Abdulaziz.” There is a tremendous struggle taking place to find a middle ground between traditional values of the non-secular East and the very different, more progressive ways of the West. Continue reading The Sultan’s Seal →

The professions: from Woodstock to a novel life, in so many words

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Languages, Literature


Professor Robert Leonard, right.

by Patricia Kitchen
Newsday, November 29, 2007

Fans of mystery novelist and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs may have noticed a new character in her most recent novel, Bones to Ashes. That would be forensic linguist Rob Potter, a Woodstock rock star-turned-linguist and onetime graduate school mentor to Reichs’ main character, Temperance Brennan.

The newcomer is based on one of Reichs’ friends, Robert Leonard, 59, a real-life former rock star-turned-forensic linguistics professor. Leonard, in fact, heads the Forensic Linguistics Project at Hofstra University. Professionals in that field analyze written and spoken language – including grammar, word choice, dialect and structure – in contracts, confessions, ransom notes, spoken threats, undercover recordings, transcripts of interrogations and other correspondence linked to crimes.

Think professor Henry Higgins meets Sherlock Holmes. Continue reading The professions: from Woodstock to a novel life, in so many words →

The Ninth International Symposium on Comparative Literature

Egypt, Literature

Call for Papers
The Ninth International Symposium on Comparative Literature
November 4-6, 2008
Department of English Language and Literature, Cairo University
“Egypt at the Crossroads: Literary and Linguistic Studies”
Deadline for abstracts: March 15, 2008

Because of its geographical, historical, and cultural placement, Egypt has been—since time immemorial—both literally and metaphorically at the crossroads. Enjoying the strategic location that it does—at a meeting point between Africa and Asia, facilitating contact between the two continents and Europe, and at a juncture between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea—Egypt is a rich amalgam of diverse cultural heritages: Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Persian, Coptic, Islamic. Influenced by all these and, in modern times, the French and British, the inhabitants are in the happy position of being hybrid—African, Arab, Mediterranean—but indubitably and inimitably Egyptian. It is, perhaps, this unique situation that inspired the Egyptian geographer Gamal Hamdan (1928-1993) to write of Egypt as having a “natural gift” which may explain “the secret of Egypt’s survival and vitality through the ages and in spite of the ages.” Continue reading The Ninth International Symposium on Comparative Literature →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #10

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the tenth in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #9

My Dear Brother Yusuf (al-Khal) (1)

I hope you and the rest of our brothers are well. I have a Lebanese friend, the Adunisian poet, Basim Shawqi al-Salmaan (2). He is currently unemployed. You know him well for he lived in your house for a few days last summer. He then moved to Adunis’ house. He also published many poems in your journal, “Shi’r:” “Jaikur and the City,” “The River and Death,” and “Christ after Crucifixion.”

He now intends to return to Lebanon. Will he be able, with your help, to obtain a job that allows him to adequately earn a living for himself, his wife, his sister, and his two children? He can work as an instructor of English or Arabic language. He can also work in journalism or do translations. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #10 →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #9

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the ninth in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.]For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #9 5/7/1958

Baghdad:

My Dear Brother Dr. Suheil (Idris),

A most sincere Arab greeting to you,

You have, undoubtedly, asked yourself the reason for my prolonged silence. Like you, I ask myself the same question.

A whole year has passed, and I have only written two poems…. Sterility is seeping into my soul. Even when I write, I write only about this sterility. However, why do your readers need to endure the bitterness of this sterility of my soul, its barrenness and despair? It is truly a miracle that I am able to write – to write poetry of course. What offering can my arid soul impart? Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #9 →