One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists died on Tuesday after an illness
One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died at the age of 48.
The Kenyan author died on Tuesday night in Nairobi after a short illness, the BBC reported. His death was confirmed by Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust, which Wainaina founded.
Continue reading...First female Omani novelist to be translated into English shares £50,000 prize with translator Marilyn Booth – the first time an Arabic book has won
Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies.
Alharthi, the £50,000 award’s first winner to write in Arabic, shares the prize equally with her translator, American academic Marilyn Booth. Celestial Bodies is set in the Omani village of al-Awafi and follows the stories of three sisters: Mayya, who marries into a rich family after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries for duty; and Khawla, waiting for a man who has emigrated to Canada.
Continue reading...Poets explore how the artform can unite people on different sides of conflict
A story is often told to illustrate how central poetry is to Yemeni culture: that of the visit of a famous lute player from Baghdad.
He was invited to play in Sana’a, where he performed enchanting and technically brilliant music for an hour. But when he stopped, the audience waited for the musician to start talking. Without any poetry, they thought, the entertainment could not possibly be over yet.
Continue reading...The passionate pro-Trump convert’s attack on the mainstream media occasionally sounds like ‘fake news’ itself
Americans’ distrust of the media is only exceeded by its disdain for Congress. Mark Levin’s latest book won’t do much to rehabilitate journalism but it should cement his standing among Trump’s go-to guys.
Related: The Mueller Report by the Washington Post review – the truth is out there… somewhere
Continue reading...Despite 30 years of repression that have hit writers unusually hard, Sudanese literature remains vigorous. Here is some of the best available in English
I was lucky to grow up in Khartoum in a house filled with books, at a time when Sudan’s public libraries flourished. One of the most startling discoveries I made as a child of about 13 was finding a couple of Tayeb Salih’s books on a shelf at home. Until that moment, I thought literature was something that took place elsewhere – in Dickens’s England or the Latin America of Borges, say. But here were stories that described the world right outside our front door. It was a moment of revelation and stirred the idea that it was possible to write.
Related: A Line in the River by Jamal Mahjoub review – Khartoum, city of memory
Continue reading...One was a Cuban newspaper reporter working to support his family and writing fiction in his spare time. The other was one of the world’s most famous novelists who came to Havana in search of inspiration.
New research shows that the themes and style in the writing of Enrique Serpa, a little-known Cuban author, find an echo in the works of Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his most notable books while in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s.
Continue reading...Each of the 104 pages in Nicolaes Tulp’s book of tulips contains a watercolour painted by the artist Jacob Marrel, with a record of the market values of the bulbs at the height of 17th-century tulip mania, the world’s first speculation bubble.
The catalogue bears testament to a period in the 1630s when the Netherlands was the richest country in the world and single tulip bulbs would sell for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled worker. However, the market crashed dramatically in 1637.
Continue reading...The best picture Oscar and the Pulitzer for biography have been bestowed on problematic and inferior works on race
Art highlighting the marginalized, blacks, gays and others, is more fashionable than ever. For the gatekeepers of culture, however, it is not authenticity but stories that celebrate a superficial idea of progressiveness which exert the greatest appeal. Narratives exhibiting how “woke” we are resonate most. As long as a work captures how accepting whites are of blacks, how understanding straights are when encountering queerness, success is assured.
Related: Culture’s race war: 'Blackness is something to consume but not engage with'
Continue reading...Reading groups are springing up across Kabul, broadening youthful horizons in a country where books are often censored
In a dimly lit room in west Kabul, stacked with shelves full of books, a small crowd gathers around the warmth of a gas heater. Books clamped under their arms, they are eager to share the stories they’ve read over the course of the week.
Members of Afghanistan’s youngest reading club, the Book Cottage, range in age from four to 13. The club is just one of many reading circles that are springing up across the capital and reviving a book culture that, once lost, is now vibrant, liberal and expanding once again.
Continue reading...Mother alarmed after anti-vaccination propaganda found inside book bought for son, who is about to receive the HPV jab
Concerns have been raised that the anti-vaccination movement is targeting children via Amazon warehouses, after a Hampshire mother found a leaflet condemning the HPV vaccine tucked inside a children’s book she had purchased from the online retailer.
Lucy Boyle bought Ali Sparkes’ Night Speakers along with several other novels as a birthday present for her 12-year-old son at the start of April. He began reading the novel last week, “got a few pages in, turned over the page and there was the leaflet,” she told the Guardian.
Continue reading...The former enfant terrible of 80s literature is now a self-appointed scourge of victimhood and outrage. He talks about his first book for a decade
Poor Bret Easton Ellis. For someone I imagine to be rather fastidious – years ago, a friend of mine visited his New York apartment, where he was a little surprised to be told not to touch any of its owner’s CDs – this can hardly be the easiest of Monday mornings. For one thing, Virgin Atlantic has lost his luggage. Ahead of my arrival at his pristine London hotel, he had to dash out to buy deodorant; his black tracksuit bottoms are faintly marked with a stain that may (or may not) be airline toothpaste. For another, I have an absolutely stinking cold. In the bar where we’re to talk – it’s called the Punch Room, which is appropriate, given the territory covered by his new book – he sits down, not at my table, but at the one next to it, which makes us both laugh. Is he really going to stay all the way over there? “Well,” he says, faux sheepish. “I’m so susceptible to these things, and I am on a book tour.” Reluctantly, he inches towards me.
Still, he is such a good sport. His manner is warm, and his face – pinker and heavier now than at the height of his literary fame, and topped with hair that is silver – bears a near-permanent smile. He talks and talks; he doesn’t watch his words; he is frequently very funny and sometimes a touch scabrous. All of which makes me wonder about the way he is treated both by some journalists and on social media. In the days before our meeting, I read a review of his new book that was so gratuitously spiteful, it fairly took the breath away. I also read an interview on the New Yorker website, one that had done brisk business on Twitter, causing indignation, outrage and glee wherever it appeared. People were saying that it dispatched the supposedly beyond-the-pale Ellis satisfyingly, and with utmost appropriateness. But it seemed to me to be mostly an exercise in baiting, interruption, disingenuousness and grandstanding on the part of its writer.
Continue reading...The Night Mail takes $50,000 prize and secures funding for an English translation
Lebanese author Hoda Barakat has won the $50,000 (£39,000) International prize for Arabic fiction (Ipaf) for her novel The Night Mail, which tells the stories of people in exile through their letters.
Billed as the “Arabic Booker”, the Ipaf also provides funding to translate the book into English. The Night Mail has already been acquired by UK publisher Oneworld, which will publish the English version in 2020.
Continue reading...Lord of the Rings author’s estate declares it did not ‘approve of, authorise or participate in the making of’ new biopic
The family and estate of JRR Tolkien have fired a broadside against the forthcoming film starring Nicholas Hoult as a young version of the author, saying that they “do not endorse it or its content in any way”.
Out in May, and starring Hoult in the title role and Lily Collins as his wife Edith, Tolkien explores “the formative years of the renowned author’s life as he finds friendship, courage and inspiration among a fellow group of writers and artists at school”. Directed by Dome Karukoski, it promises to reveal how “their brotherhood strengthens as they grow up … until the outbreak of the first world war which threatens to tear their fellowship apart”, all of which, according to studio Fox Searchlight, would inspire Tolkien to “write his famous Middle-earth novels”.
Continue reading...Defoe’s book has inspired novels, Hollywood movies and games – but the shipwrecked slave-trader should never have become a role model
In February 1719, two months before the publication of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe proposed in the Weekly Journal that the South Sea Company – founded just eight years earlier to manage the national debt and awarded a contract to supply the Spanish colonies in Latin America with several thousand African slaves per year – should oversee the founding of a British colony at the mouth of the River Orinoco on the coast of present day Venezuela. The government would be required “to furnish six Men of War, and 4000 regular Troops, with some Engineers and 100 pieces of Cannon, and military Stores in Proportion for the maintaining and supporting the Design”, but “the Revenue it shall bring to the Kingdom will be a full amends”. Defoe chose to locate the fictional island on which Crusoe is stranded around 40 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco, and furnish it with a kindlier climate than that of the actual island on which Alexander Selkirk, the presumed model for Crusoe, was marooned. His book (no one was calling it a “novel” at the time) was a prospectus for potential investors, lacking only glossy photos of beaches and palm trees.
Bribery and insider dealing combined with public credulity to drive the share price of the South Sea Company unsustainably high, and in 1720 the bubble burst, causing widespread financial ruin. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – which recounts, in addition to Crusoe’s diligent labours on the island, his skirmishes with cannibals and a crew of English mutineers, his rescue and a perilous overland journey from Lisbon to bring home the fortune that has been accumulating during his absence – would have been a better investment. By late summer 1719 the book had been reprinted three times and Defoe had published a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. A third volume, Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, followed in 1720. By the end of the 19th century, the original Crusoe had been reissued in several hundred editions and the book had come to resemble, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “one of the anonymous productions of the race rather than the effort of a single mind”. During the 20th century, Defoe’s original template was turned upside down and inside out – by, among many others, HG Wells, Jean Giraudoux, William Golding, JG Ballard and Julio Cortázar – in ways that reflected changing attitudes to race, gender, imperialism, rationality and the environment.
Continue reading...Other schools look to follow after Tàber school takes out one-third of its collection, deeming the books ‘highly stereotypical and sexist’
Several schools across Barcelona are considering purging their libraries of stereotypical and sexist children’s books, after one removed around 200 titles, including Little Red Riding Hood and the story of the legend of Saint George, from its library.
The Tàber school’s infant library of around 600 children’s books was reviewed by the Associació Espai i Lleure as part of a project that aims to highlight hidden sexist content. The group reviewed the characters in each book, whether or not they speak and what roles they perform, finding that 30% of the books were highly sexist, had strong stereotypes and were, in its opinion, of no pedagogical value.
Continue reading...‘Short story stations’ in Canary Wharf print one- three- and five-minute reads on demand
“Every single day,” says Paresh Raichura, “I’m on the lookout for something new to read.” On his hour-long commute to Canary Wharf, where he works for the Financial Ombudsman, he picks up Time Out or a local paper or the freesheet Metro, but says: “I’ve stopped reading all the long novels I used to read.”
Why?
Continue reading...Anti-sorcery post by evangelical Catholic group widely mocked on Facebook
Catholic priests in Poland have burned books that they say promote sorcery, including one of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, in a ceremony they photographed and posted on Facebook.
Three priests in the northern city of Koszalin were pictured carrying the books in a large basket from inside a church to a stone area outside. The books were set alight as prayers were said and a small group of people watched on. A mask, various trinkets and a Hello Kitty umbrella were also visible in the pictures of the makeshift bonfire.
Continue reading...The saga of the Seven Kingdoms may be bowing out, but it has opened the floodgates. Here’s your guide to the next big heroes
Rand al’Thor was found as a baby on the slopes of Dragonmount and taken to Two Rivers, where he grew into a broad-shouldered shepherd boy. But Rand is possessed of immense power, a power as yet untapped, for he is also The Dragon Reborn, destined to be hunted by Darkhounds and Darkfriends as he bids to prove himself a mighty warrior leader. Among other things, Rand’s existence shows that you should always believe ancient prophesies, that even the low-born can save the world – and that characters in TV fantasy series must always have two names.
Rand is just one of the 2,782 characters who appear in Wheel of Time, the bestselling saga of fantasy novels by Robert Jordan. We can only hope the forthcoming adaptation on Amazon will hone the cast down a little, as we follow Rand and his forces towards Tarmon Gai’don, or the final battle between good and evil.
Continue reading...Vicky Ward has produced a damning depiction, a lethal amalgam of Page Six-like dish and firsthand investigative reporting
Like Donald Trump, Americans are displeased with Jared Kushner, the president’s squeaky sounding son-in-law. As the reality that Kushner received his White House security clearance the same way he got into Harvard sinks in – “Daddy” pulled some very expensive strings – his popularity will not be rebounding anytime soon.
Related: Revealed: Kushner 'challenged on conflicts of interest by Trump aides'
Continue reading...As he powers into his 80s, the photographer recalls shooting everyone from Kate Moss to Andy Warhol, shares his regrets over voting leave – and reveals how Gordon Brown pulled a fast one on him
‘You look knackered,” says David Bailey, greeting me at his studio. It’s up a small mews and sprawls so casually across two floors that it still feels like the 60s inside. “Look at you,” he says. “Your buttons aren’t even done up right.” I look down at my jacket: that bit is true. But I tell him: “I’m not tired!”
“I was watching you walking along the street,” he says. “I thought, ‘That must be the journalist, she looks knackered.’” The combination of acuity (he must be right: he is, after all, the one who makes a living with his eyes) and demonic overfamiliarity (by this point, we are holding hands; I have no idea who started it) is disarming. If this is his shtick, it’s working on me, totally and overwhelmingly. Or maybe he has a tailored shtick for everyone he meets.
Continue reading...