Category Archives: Literature

Last night something very unique happened to me. I suppose it is not so unique in the sense of it being an astonishing or mysterious event. Nevertheless, it was a first.

I was reading Mohamed Choukri’s autobiographical novel, For Bread Alone. It tells the story of Choukri’s tragic first 17 years of life from fleeing the famine stricken Rif Mountains to Tangier where he goes from living with an abusive father to living as a street dweller. I had already researched a little about his life and association with Paul Bowles (whose The Spider’s House I thoroughly enjoyed) and knew that Choukri went from being illiterate until a very late age only to become one of the most influential writers in the Magreb. Continue reading →

I am about half way through The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles which takes place in 1950s Fez, and I just read this sentence:

Even the smallest measure of time is greater than the greatest measure of space.

This immediately reminded me of “Being and Distance“, the first post that I ever entered into this blog. “Being and Distance” is fictional prose about how the measure of distance in kilometers (spatial terms) is ontologically irrelevant without factoring in all of the other essential things that one has to traverse through space and time (i.e., all that we gain or lose during our course of travel). In any event, the above quote pleasantly brought me back to my first blog post, almost a little more than 11 months ago. It also made me feel like I was not completely out of my mind when I wrote it.

I have just finished reading Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley and Amin Maalouf’s Samarkand, two excellent novels that help us oustiders understand the mindsets, cultures, and history of Egypt and Persia respectively. As I have mentioned on numerous occassions previously in this blog, I love learning about other cultures through reading novels by their greatest storytellers (although Maalouf is Lebanese and not Iranian). I highly recommend either of these books as they do a great job of putting the world we live in today into perspective. Here it is:

Continue reading →

One of the first things I buy when I go to the States are books. I prefer to read in English rather than in Spanish (with the sole exception of Spanish literature). Furthermore, there is a greater wealth of novels translated into English than into Spanish, and I generally read literature from around the world. Here are my most recent purchases (and gifts) to start off the new year: Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, The Last Song of Dusk; Paul Bowles, The Spider’s House; Amos Oz, Fima; Tahar Ben Jelloun, The Last Friend; Amin Maalouf, Samarkand; Naguib Mahfouz, Midaq Alley; and P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves (not appearing in the picture). Of course, I can’t get started on any of these until I finish The Idiot, but luckily I only have about 7.5 hours left if I can stay awake. Oh yeah, and there is the problem of working 12 hours a day and not having free time to read.