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Egypt artists “reopen” street by graffiti protest
After Egypt’s ruling military sealed off streets around Cairo’s Tahrir Square with walls of imposing concrete blocks, a group of artists decided to reopen the avenues on their own – in the public imagination, at least.
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MOVIE REVIEW: A Heart Needs One Thing, Society Wants Another
“The Deep Blue Sea” is based on Terence Rattigan’s play about a woman’s attempt to live by the dictates of her heart rather than the expectations of society. Read more
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The Many Lives and Languages of a Palestinian Novel
By Olivia Snaije
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Sometimes there are heart-warming stories in the publishing world about books that are granted a second life. Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin, just out in Arabic, is one such story. Abulhawa, a Palestinian who lives in the United States and works as a scientist published her first novel in 2006 entitled The Scar of David. The small publishing house, which was soon to go out of business, made contact with a French editor, Marc Parent, who bought the rights and brought out the novel in translation with a new name: Mornings in Jenin. Read more -
Inspired by ‘Mad Men’
A look at vintage-inspired ads with a “Mad Men” flavor. Read more
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Colonial Exhibitions and Staging of Arab Spring
Watching a popular uprising in real time was indeed a dramatic experience. As viewers tuned in (or streamed in) to the violence, courage, and uncertainty of events in North Africa this year, many of them had the impression of witnessing the “actual” events, free from the framing tactics and analytical bias often found on the six o’clock news. A host of new media celebrities became household names as they reported live from Tahrir, and news outlets such as Al-Jazeera saw an unprecedented rise in viewership. Spectators were made to believe that a return to the event “itself” was once again possible after decades of being locked into what Jean Baudrillard called the hyper-real. The revolution in-and-of-itself seemed to unfold before our eyes, creating a fetish for real-time revolt. Read more
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Ali Ferzat: Revolution redefines art in Syria
That cartoon reveals Ferzat’s own dealings with President Assad, where he soon found the rhetoric of change fell far short of the reality. He recalls that when Mr Assad first came to power, the artistic community in Syria tried to win him over to its side. Ferzat himself was allowed to start his own satirical magazine – the first independent paper to be licensed for decades. Read more
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Editor Not Ready to Write an Ending
While his possible successors are dinner-party fodder, Robert Silvers says he has no plans to step down from The New York Review of Books. Read more
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My Life’s Sentences by JHUMPA LAHIRI
Not all sentences end up in novels or stories. We encounter books at different times in life, often appreciating them, apprehending them, in different ways. But their language is constant. The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail. But novels and stories consist of nothing but. Read more
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Interview: Hari Kunzru
Hari Kunzru was selected in 2003 as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Four books later he talks to Online Editor Ted Hodgkinson about his latest novel (a multistranded epic that interweaves stories from the 18th century with the present), the scandal surrounding News International, the recent riots across Britain and this boyhood dream of being abducted by UFOs. Read more
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How to Be Creative
The image of the ‘creative type’ is a myth. Jonah Lehrer on why anyone can innovate—and why a hot shower, a cold beer or a trip to your colleague’s desk might be the key to your next big idea.
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Literature and its influences: Mother, may I
How writers are made by their families.
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Fractious family relations may not be uncommon, yet the extent to which these writers—including W.B. Yeats, Thomas Mann, James Baldwin and John Cheever—managed to fight with their parents, siblings and children make arguments over the dinner table seem like a specialised art form. Read more -
Transformation of Palestinian landscape focus of Designing Civic Encounter project
Urban space, landscapes and experiences are at the center of a new multidisciplinary project focused on Palestine, in which artists, architects, environmentalists, academics and activists have come together to discuss the transformation of space in both Palestinian and other regional Arab cities… Read more
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Afghans Build Peace, One Stanza at a Time
Usually, people who make important decisions for countries never live long enough to see the effects of their choices. It is almost always future generations who bear the burdens of the past. In 1978, the Chinese government created a political policy that would change the face of China. Under pressure to control a ballooning population in a country that was too poor to support it, the “One Child Policy” was created… Read more
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Cairo: My City, Our Revolution by Ahdaf Soueif – review
It was on the 15th day of the Egyptian revolution that I first encountered Ahdaf Soueif in Tahrir Square. She wore big round sunglasses that swallowed her face, and a dark scarf covered her head and fell over her shoulders. It would have been easy to dismiss her as just another spirited revolutionary, but a flock of fellow protesters grew around her, and followed her, and stuck… Read more
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Revolution between hard covers
THE Middle East has a bad reputation when it comes to books; nowhere else do so few people read them. But that might change as censorship rules are relaxed and new books begin to dissect the popular uprisings that felled despots in Egypt and Tunisia—along with other delicate subjects. Eye-witness accounts, jeremiads and self-congratulatory memoirs jostle for space at the Cairo book fair, which coincides this month with the first anniversary of the revolutions… View site
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Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book
I’ve published eight books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), one comic book, and the last two I’ve self-published… View site
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New York Review Books
New York Review Books publishes NYRB Classics, NYRB Collections, and The New York Review Children’s Collection… View site
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Top Ten New Yorker Stories of 2011
Top Ten New Yorker Stories of 2011… View list
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The 11 Best Innovation Essays We Published In 2011
When company executives talk strategy, the question, whether spoken or implicit, invariably is, How can we be more like Apple? How do we develop those radical products that disrupt what people thought was possible? Read more
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5 Books to Look Forward to in 2012
Toni Morrison tackles race in post-Korean War America. A young literary star shows what happens when two people who’ve never met in person and have only spoken on the Internet get married. Anne Lamott describes the joy of being a grandmother. The sequel to The Passage finally arrives. Michael Chabon releases his first novel in four years… Read more
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From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model
An educator from the Scandinavian country that ranks among the world’s leaders in school quality visited New York and explained his nation’s success….Read more
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The Art of Destruction
YAFRAN, Libya — In a country where creativity was stifled to ensure the pre-eminence of one man, art can be the best revenge. Inside the gutted shell of a building that once housed a Qaddafi-regime intelligence unit, the paint of a new mural of a tree whose roots are feeding on the blood of fallen rebel fighters is drying on the wall. The house was half-destroyed in fighting between Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels who brought him down — and that’s exactly the way the artist Belgassem Grada hopes it will stay.The slight, wiry oil-field engineer never thought of himself as an artist — at most he used to doodle in his spare time. But today Grada, 47, has turned a former outpost of intimidation and symbol of Qaddafi’s stranglehold over Libya into Freedom House, a museum devoted to memorializing Libya’s civil war… Read more
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Famous Authors’ Harshest Rejection Letters
It’s hard to imagine that the definitive icons of literature could have been subject to the same iciness of the high-gated publishing-house “no” machines that we know all too well. Of course, even down-to-earth publishers can miss a great work sitting on their desks; with thousands of titles of varying merit clogging editors’ mailboxes, it’s impossible to skim every page of every slush-pile manuscript, let alone give it its proper consideration. Furthermore, some of our most adored geniuses churned out well-spotted crap before maturing into the artists we remember.
Prescience is no hard science, but hindsight can be a kick in the shins nonetheless, especially for the editors who sent these rejection letters to writers who would later become the bestselling, influential giants of their day — and ours…Read More
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An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’
Chengdu in June burst with life. The flowers were out, the markets awash with watermelons, and a scent of jasmine pervaded the air. After nightfall you’d see some people in the crowd laughing and others crying. Life was like a lavish banquet in a graveyard, with death fluttering smilingly around us.Chengdu in June burst with life. The flowers were out, the markets awash with watermelons, and a scent of jasmine pervaded the air. After nightfall you’d see some people in the crowd laughing and others crying. Life was like a lavish banquet in a graveyard, with death fluttering smilingly around us… Read More
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Murong Xuecun’s Acceptance Speech for the 2010 People’s Literature Prize
If I am not mistaken, the People’s Literature magazine “special action award” was not bestowed for my literary achievement, but for my courage. I’m embarrassed because I am not a brave person.Genuine bravery for a writer is not about jousting with a pyramid-scam gang. It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer’s conscience… Read More
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