Leading Proust scholar William C. Carter has started a website “devoted to studying and celebrating the life and works of Marcel Proust” that offers both a wealth of literary resources and an online course. Along with University of Alabama at Birmingham student Nicolas D. Drogoul, Carter has launched Proust Ink
Ali Ahmad Said Esber is better known to the Arabic world as Adonis, though he is only beginning his entrance into the Anglo world. Syrian-born and currently living in Paris, Adonis is, and has been for decades, one of the most popular modern poets writing in Arabic. His twenty volumes
Adina Hoffman’s biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Al, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, is not a love story. Instead, it is a story of loss and how from that loss Taha has created art. Amira became a “muse” in Taha’s work, a symbol of everything his family lost when they became refugees; indeed, it was everything.
An interview with Janet Malcolm is a rare thing. Malcolm’s latest book, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, recounts the sensational murder trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova, a young physician in Queens convicted in 2009 for arranging the public assassination of her husband in front of their four year-old daughter. We sat down with the author for special insight into her experiences observing the court drama and writing this fascinating account.
According to Taliban author, Ahmed Rashid, in this morning’s New York Times: “Afghanistan just got more dangerous and unpredictable.” Tim Bird and Alex Marshall’s Afghanistan: How the West Lost Its Way not only chronicles the United States’ longest war but also addresses the questions that have plagued the West since the early years.
With the Arab Spring affecting up to twenty nations, depending on the source, it is hard to know which warrants the most interest or concern. Victoria Clark, author of Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes, argues that the United States needs to make understanding Yemen a priority or risk the cultivation of more terrorists.
What symbols do you wear every day? Does your haircut symbolize your gender? Are you wearing a ring to tell the world you’re married, you graduated from a certain college, or just that you can afford it? In A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America, Leila Ahmed explores the trend of Muslim women embracing the veil since the 1970s after at least four decades of going bareheaded.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and its research institute, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), have announced that they will launch a landmark project in January of 2012: a digital archive of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art and a companion book series. From the Museum:
His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama turns 76 today, according to the best estimates. His role in Tibet is described by Sam van Schaik in Tibet: A History, which examines Tibetan history and politics from 600 C.E. to the present.
Wondering if the world is going to end soon? We don’t blame you. Tsunamis and floods, earthquakes and nuclear melt-downs, Arctic iceberg melt-downs and tornados—and it’s not even 2012 yet. Just remember, people have been expecting the end of the world almost since it began. It’s all in how you