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Over the next few days, we’re going to highlight a few of the goings on at this year’s BookExpo America, the parties, the panels, etc. I thought I’d start out by highlighting the two events taking place next Friday and Saturday featuring the Arab world, this year’s Global Market Forum focus. Both of these events are open to the public, and are definitely worth checking out.
The Thousand and One Nights
7:00PM, Friday, May 29
Goethe Institute New York Wyoming Building, 5 East 3rd Street
Muhsin Al-Musawi presents his new book, Amal Al-Jubouri reads Arabic and European remixes of “The Thousand and One Nights” (English/German/Arabic) organized by the Berlin-based cultural association west-östlicher diwanh.
New Eyes on the Arab World—Breaking Down Barriers of Fear and Prejudice
7:00PM, Saturday, May 30
The New York Public Library, 42nd Street
Peter Theroux, Raja Alem, Tom McDonough, Muhammed Al Mur & Joe Sacco with Sulaiman Al Hattlan, moderator
Five writers, Arab and American, who have taken innovative approaches to portraying the Arab World to an American audience discuss the challenges they have faced and the successes they have achieved in breaking down the barriers of fear and prejudice through their work. Whether through travelogue, memoir, graphic novel, children’s literature or translation, these writers have widened the lens and sharpened the focus of American readers’ view, setting a new precedent for sensitivity, creativity and insight in literature about the Arab World.
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
The last five days of the eleventh-century Icelandic politician, writer of sagas, and famous murder victim Snorri Sturleleson (the Norwegian spelling, Snorre, is preserved in the book) make up Thorvald Steen’s most recently translated historical fiction, The Little Horse. Murdered. . .
Reviewed by Peter Biello
We all know Paris, or at least we think we know it. The Eiffel Tower. The Latin Quarter. The Champs-Élysées. The touristy stuff. In Dominique Fabre’s novel, Guys Like Me, we’re shown a different side of Paris: a gray, decaying. . .
Reviewed by Christopher Iacono
One hundred pages into Birth of a Bridge, the prize-winning novel from French writer Maylis de Kerangal, the narrator describes how starting in November, birds come to nest in the wetlands of the fictional city of Coca, California, for three. . .
Reviewed by Valerie Miles
At 30, the Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli is already gathering her rosebuds. Faces in the Crowd, her poised debut novel, was published by Coffee House Press, along with her Brodsky-infused essay collection, Sidewalks. The essays stand as a theoretical map. . .
Reviewed by Cameron Rowe
Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopia (narrated by Julio Cortázar) is, not disappointingly, as wild a book as its title suggests. It is a half-novella half-graphic novel story about . . . what, exactly? A European tribunal, Latin. . .
Reviewed by Lori Feathers
Marie NDiaye has created a tiny, psychological masterpiece with her Self-Portrait in Green. In it she explores how our private fears and insecurities can distort what we believe to be real and can cause us to sabotage our intimate relationships.. . .
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
Reading a genre book—whether fantasy, science fiction, crime, thriller, etc.—which begins to seem excessively, stereotypically bad, I have to make sure to ask myself: is this parodying the flaws of the genre? Usually, this questioning takes its time coming. In. . .
Reviewed by Patience Haggin
The Sicilian Mafia has always been a rich subject for sensational crime fiction. The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos worked the mob’s bloody corpses and family feuds to both entertainment and artistic value. Giuseppe di Piazza’s debut novel attempts this,. . .
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
Antoine Volodine’s vast project (40 plus novels) of what he calls the post-exotic remains mostly untranslated, so for many of us, understanding it remains touched with mystery, whispers from those “who know,” and guesswork. That’s not to say that, were. . .
Reviewed by Acacia O'Connor
It hasn’t quite neared the pitch of the waiting-in-line-at-midnight Harry Potter days, but in small bookstores and reading circles of New York City, an aura has attended the novelist Elena Ferrante and her works. One part curiosity (Who is she?),. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
