The Guardian's Blog, page 31
December 4, 2015
Crucifixion: Nathalie Handal on being Palestinian, writing and enduring love
In the latest in our series of essays on what life and work are like for writers around the world, Nathalie Handal describes an existence where hearts race so fast it’s hard to find time for grief
By Nathalie Handal for The Writing Life Around the World from Electric Literature, part of the Guardian Books Network
I sit by the window and wait for her to finish her story. She has the posture of a ballerina. Her honey-colored eyes against her hot magenta headscarf offer a striking contrast. We are on a bus at the Bethlehem checkpoint en route to Jerusalem. The anthology of Arabic verse I’m carrying inspired the exchange. She tells me that each time she enters Damascus Gate she recreates the day that changed her forever. Then adds that she has eleven versions so far. I don’t know what she is speaking about and for a second the sky’s paleness distracts us. She explains:
I memorize. I’m addicted to memorizing. I memorize the exact pitch in the voice of the kaak seller, the gleam in my sister’s eyes when she meets the sun by the window, the circumference of the circular window. I memorize Al-Mutanabbi. I just memorized the face in the red Toyota Corolla that passed by us. I memorize street numbers, abandoned neckties, books. I memorize him. His charcoal eyes. His full lips. Square chin. White teeth. I forget him. I keep re-memorizing him. Together we wrote poetry. Threw the fear in the mountains we never could get to.
I forget he memorized with me. Once we memorized Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s work, and as we started Ghassan Kanafani’s stories, the half-moon insisted we memorize it first. We were happy in our craziness. We ached. I memorize the way my hands get cold and my heart beats aimlessly as if it’s broken. I forget I remember him. And his Lifta. Forget the rain caught in the yellow light of night. I forget the pen he gave to me. The one I left with him so that he could keep giving it to me each time we met. I forget I never saw him again. Forget why he didn’t memorize the world and stayed with me—a strange soul who memorizes to keep the empty rooms in every blank page of my notebook away.
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Wookie books: the science fiction that inspired George Lucas's Star Wars
Star Wars made science fiction a cultural phenomenon, but the film’s origins lie in other texts, and ancient myths conceived a long time ago, in civilisations far, far away
It’s remarkable how many science-fiction fans hate Star Wars. To those who like their SF grounded in science, Star Wars is reprehensible “skiffy” in the pejorative sense, a flight of fantasy cloaked in science-fiction’s clothes. For most under-40s, Star Wars is where their love of sci-fi began, but for those who remember the genre’s golden age, George Lucas’ blockbuster creation isn’t quite so original.
“They probably wondered how any man could see out through a helmet built up of inches-thick laminated alloys, with neither window nor port through which to look, but if so, they made no mention of their curiosity.”
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
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December 3, 2015
Is being compared to Gollum the ultimate insult... or precious praise?
A man may go to jail for two years for comparing Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Gollum from Lord of the Rings on Facebook. But is Gollum tragically misunderstood?
Would you mind being compared to Gollum, the slimy, bulged-eyed backstabber from JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fantasy novels? Think carefully about the answer: a Turkish doctor could be facing two years in jail on the basis of how that particular teaser shakes down.
Dr Bilgin Çiftçi appeared in court this week, accused of insulting Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for comparing Erdogan to the movie portrayal of Gollum on Facebook. But in a classic James Pickles-esque “Who are the Beatles?” moment, the chief judge presiding over the case admitted that although he had seen parts of the Peter Jackson movie adaptations, he wasn’t overly familiar with Gollum’s character.
Related: Gollum insult to Erdoğan a mistaken claim, says Lord of Rings director
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Food in books: marzipan in The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
A bestselling historical novel set in 17th century Amsterdam set Kate Young on the trail on a sweet that has been associated with festivity for hundreds of years
By Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the Guardian Books Network
At the sight of them, she is taken by the desire for something sweet. “Do you have any marzipan?”
“No. Sugar is – not something we take much of. It makes people’s souls grow sick.”
The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton
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Poster poems: ice
The element of frozen hell and hopeless waters, the indifferent heart and the chill hand of loss. Thaw out your imagination and submit your ice-capped rimes
The first frost of winter is one of the clearest markers of change in the annual cycle of life. Nothing quite signals nature’s hibernation, the temporary cessation of growth, like a crisp layer of ice settling on the earth, whitening the grass and freezing the surface of lake and stream. Little wonder that ice has come to symbolise emotional and physical demise in so many cultural and artistic contexts.
If the hoar frost grip thy tent
Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent.
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December 1, 2015
Translation Tuesday: Okinawa, Mon Amour by Betina González
In this story set in 80s Japan, South-American and Japanese schoolchildren lie down on train tracks and reminisce about legends of wars past – until a very real conflict disrupts their blissful youth
By Betina González and Meghan Flaherty for Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote, part of the Guardian Books Network
In Japan everything always happened in reverse: wolves did not eat people, kamikazes were not afraid of death, grumpy people smiled, and Cinderella was a stoker’s son named Mamichigane.
Every day, Miriam thought about that typhoon-exhausted island she had never seen: Shuri Castle cloaked in flames, the drowned children of the Tsushima Maru, and the woman who came down from Heaven and had to stay on Earth because some man stole her magic kimono.
Okinawa had to be the one place in the world with a commemorative statue of the Father of Immigration: Kyuzo Toyama
Once it became obvious the battle would end in Japanese defeat, the girls retreated to their cave and killed themselves
It was Okinawa’s most beautiful season, the same as the air strike, the sinking of boats full of refugees and children
She tied a purple handkerchief around her head and wouldn’t listen to her mother and grandmother
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November 30, 2015
Goodbye Samuel Johnson, hello Baillie Gifford: top non-fiction prize gets new sponsor – and new name
The investment firm has stumped up the cash for an overhaul and vowed to make the award crack America. But do literary prizes actually mean anything to readers?
The future of the UK’s premier non-fiction prize is assured – for another five years at least – as the Samuel Johnson prize announces a new sponsor. The new era brings a new name, with the retitling of the prize in honour of the investment firm that has stumped up the cash. The Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction has also announced a new ambition – to break America and become “the leading non-fiction book prize in the world”.
It’s the first sign that literary prizes can still attract big money after a year of sponsorship drought, with both the Folio and Impac awards also announcing earlier this year that they were searching for new backers.
Related: Steve Silberman on winning the Samuel Johnson prize: 'I was broke, broke, broke'
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Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week – it’s all about short books and short stories this week, perfect to squeeze in before longer holiday reads.
TimHannigan is in the middle of a run of Very Short Books as recommended by fellow TLSers:
The latest was The Singing Bowl by Alistair Carr, as recommended by @laidbackviews. It’s a short travel book about time spent (mostly) in Mongolia. It’s very cleanly written, with a strong sense of the grubbiness and thin thread of drunken violence that runs through Ulan Bator (never been myself, but I have two close family members who live and work there). I also think there’s a lot to be said for the travelogue condensed into novella length. There was, however, something oddly amateurish about the book as a piece of travel literature. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, though being written in the present tense was part of the problem. Travelogues written in the present tense always sound like either magazine articles, or the naïve and solipsistic “what I did on my holidays” pieces that people sometimes read at open mic “writers’ events”.
A thought-provoking, evocative novel that deserves more than one reading, demonstrating the ease with which Toni Morrison and her narrative skill are able to skate into the 21st century, to pick up and explore the nuances of another of society’s dysfunctional aspects, that the things you do and say to children in their early years really matter and will impact their adult perceptions, actions and relationships. However, there are moments, that if grasped, can and do lead one out of that.
Johnson is one of the rare writers who fully inhabits a character of the opposite sex. His characters are heart-breaking
I’ve mentioned before that I rarely read short stories, mostly because I don’t have time to form attachments to characters in a short space. Well, Adam Johnson got to me in his short story.
Interesting Facts, which is also contained in his recent National Book Award-winning collection Fortune Smiles, is a remarkable “meta” story. It is narrated by a character who is the wife of a recent Pulitzer-prize winning author who has written a book about North Korea. Which would seem to be Johnson himself, having won the Pulitzer for The Orphanmaster’s Son, a phenomenal piece of work that I recommend. The narrator has breast cancer, and she narrates the story through the scrim of chemotherapy, which I have heard from friends who have undergone it, gets into your brain in ways that are difficult to describe if you haven’t experienced it. I guess it’s sort of the way your brain can feel sometimes during pregnancy, when you are flooded with hormones that feel as if they are blocking you from reaching parts of your brain that you know are there. This is what it’s like for the wife, who knows she’s dying, and is failing to make herself understood.
I don’t want to give too much away, but Johnson is one of the rare writers who fully inhabits a character of the opposite sex. His characters are heart-breaking, and while mentioning that the wife is dying might explain the fact that the story made me weep, it’s not that actually. That would be too facile. What made me weep were small moments that Johnson’s language conveyed in ways that went right for the gut. Makes me tempted to pony up and buy the collected stories in hardback.
I have been a fan of Greene for as long as I can remember and relish the chance to re-read anything I can find. I am always leaving them on train seats or in boxes as I leave one country to live in another. I didn’t actually intend my life to live out like a Graham Greene novel but it often seems than way.
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Poem of the Week: Straight Up by Owen Gallagher
A playful and euphemistic poem about masculinity and the festering, phallic fear of sexual inadequacy
Straight Up
When she grasped what I considered big,
stuttered Is that it?
I fumbled with the zip.
November 28, 2015
Which are your favourite books of 2015?
Authors’ votes are in ... Now it’s your chance to nominate the book you enjoyed the most this year
The time for lists has arrived, and after immersing ourselves in authors’ favourite books of 2015 – the Guardian Review and the Observer versions – we are passing the baton to you. All genres are welcome, and we will accept books that have been published in the US or Australia and not yet in the UK, or vice versa. So, get voting! We will be publishing a readers’ list on the Guardian site before the end of the year.
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