The Idle Years — A Short Novel from Turkey
Orhan Kemal would not be one of the widely known names of Turkish literature in the West, unlike his semi name-share, …
Category Archives: General
Ferlinghetti Declares for the 49ers
Unexpectedly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti made an appearance on the NY Times sports pages today. Of last weeks 49ers victory over the …
Children of Paradise – A Film from Iran
If there is a film director better at making movies about children than Majid Majidi of Iran, I don’t know …
Passage of Tears – a novel from Djibouti
A returning ex-pat, an espionage mission, a mysterious Islamist counter-intelligence figure locked away in Djibouti’s Devil’s Islands, a palimpsest of letters …
Solar City
In a world where hope is running close to empty, this is a sniff of good news. Two-thirds of …
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
I’ve had the pleasure of reading (actually, listening to) Bay Area author Tamim Ansary’s Destiny Disrupted: A History of the …
The Owl and the Sparrow — A Film from Vietnam
There may be no films we watch with more trepidation than those of little girls in dire circumstances. Little boys, …
Season of Migration to the North — Tayeb Salih, Sudan
I’ve been trying to keep my focus on fiction and film from the North African/Middle Eastern countries where the 2011 …
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham (2009) is the most interesting non-fiction, science related book I’ve …
Caramel – A Film from Lebanon
Caramel, Nadine Labaki’s 2007 film from Lebanon, is about as close a film from the Arab world to those Western …
A Prophet — A Film from France
Wheww! You want to see a very tough prison film, don’t slow up with Dead Man Walking, or The Green …
Methane Seeping Faster in Sub Polar Regions
“Gas locked inside Siberia’s frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last …