Weekend Reading

"'I think poetry is in everything that I write because it’s in the language and the attitude of the writing,' said Medel. 'When you write a poem you have to go to the essence of the poem, and I’m trying to do the same in fiction. I try to go to the heart of the story.'"
George Mason University

"I’ve come across highly sophisticated US poetry readers who seem to be intimidated by the Ramayana: they find my book 'culturally challenging' or somehow feel they have to prepare for it, 'educate' themselves before they even start reading. Strangely, no one ever says that about the Iliad or the Odyssey, although those worlds are arguably as distant from ours as the Valmiki is."
Plume Poetry

"Exhausted on the Cross by the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and published by New York Review Books, has won the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for poetry in translation. The £3,000 prize money will be shared by Darwish and Abu-Zeid."
The Bookseller

"The majority of living Nobel prize for literature laureates have called on world leaders attending the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt this week to help free thousands of political prisoners in the country, including the writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah who is six months into a hunger strike and 'at risk of death'."
The Guardian

"In the Middle East, whenever I could, I always looked for writers to speak to history. And by history, I meant what was happening right in front of me. This was true in 1991, when I discovered that my translator, Esho Y., whose name means Jesus in Aramaic, had translated The Satanic Verses for Saddam Hussein. Under threat of torture, for an entire week, along with a dozen other unfortunate souls at the Ministry of Information."
Arrowsmith Press

"The 2022 Booker Prize was given to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, written by Sri Lanka's Shehan Karunatilaka. The annual award...is for a work of fiction written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland. The panel of judges hailed Karunatilaka's novel as 'a searing, mordantly funny satire set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war.'"
National Public Radio

"How Beautiful We Were is an important addition to the growing body of petrofiction. Most Americans don’t want to expose the ugliness of their dependence on oil and seem disinclined to dwell in this murk, which leaves the task of documentation to immigrant writers. Mbue has witnessed the dependence herself. Her novel can be almost shocking in its hopelessness, though perhaps that is the most honest way to describe the Oil Encounter."
The New York Review

"The Spanish author's novel Easy Reading sees four women with disabilities struggle against powerlessness and fight for self-determination."
DW

"This International Booker-winning story of a woman who travels to Pakistan at the age of 80 to reclaim her true identity is a breath of fresh air."
The Guardian

"Goorie-Koori author Evelyn Araluen has been announced as the 2022 winner of the highly-coveted Stella Prize. The annual women's award recognises outstanding writing by a local author, and furnishes the winner with a lucrative prize [of $60,000.]"
NITV