A Thousand and One Arabian Nights - Geraldine McCaughrean

- from TPL
Well-written.  A good source for a variety of arabic stories.

Princess Peacok - Tales from the Other Peoples of China

- from TPL

Some interesting folk tales from several islamic peoples of China, some Turkic speakers, mostly in the Xinjiang area.
Good resource.

Rispondimi - Tamaro Susana

Un libro un po' noioso per me.  Tipica storia di malinconia e tristezza.  Una protagonista nevrotica chi mena una vita piena di problemi - problemi fatti dagli altri ve anche da se stessa.

Birds of Amber - Ibrahim Abdel Meguid 2005

A "Balzacien" look at Alexandrian society during and immediately following the Suez Crisis in 1956.  There is some direct exploration of the current social and ethnic issues but I mostly enjoyed the rich collection of characters which is developed in the course of the novel.  These characters all cross paths in a particular arab neighbourhood but occupy a variety of economic and social niches - some also move in different ethnic, political and social circles outside the arabic neighbourhood.  As you read you get a sense of the different points of view and ways of conceiving the world within arabic egyptian society of the time.  It is not a political novel - as the european, greek and jewish communities leave, it is interesting to see the emotional reaction of the various characters in the book.  One particular thread crosses into the world of classical arabic music performance, and also looks a bit at the police state element of Nasser's early years.

A bit disjointed, as one critic mentioned, but for me that is part of the charm.

To find:
No One Sleeps in Alexandria
The Other Place

There is also a long list of arabic authors published by the same company in the back of the book.

Left in Dark Times - Bernard-Henry Levy 2008

I got a few leads on classic 20th c authors and texts to follow up on, but otherwise this book rambles a bit too much.  It is a bit inbred, I think, in that he assumes an interest in, and a familiarity with, the history of the ideas of the left in the course of the 20th century (especially in France).
He does bring up the point  of the death of big ideologies as a result of the horrendous revolutions we've seen through the 20th c. - particularly the discrediting of the very concept of revolution and designed human society.  I'm not so sure though that the right has moved away from big ideologies - and he doesn't seem to address this.  How can the left stand as an alternative to the right if they don't have a vision, a narrative, a story that can stand up to the ideologies of the right?  (Thinking of american politics here...)
Levy does raise some interesting points regarding human rights, cosmopolitanism, and tolerance vs respect (tolerance accepts from a distance without wanting to engage; respect implies willingness to engage, incorporate a presence into your society.  Levy also addresses the issue of cultural relativity vs. human rights, coming down strongly on the human rights side.  (If tradition and culture are worth more than human rights, it is a double standard in relation to our own western society, where rights over tradition has come to be the norm - and lead to positive social change.)
Levy also looks at the Israel/Palestine conflict, but from a very shallow, historically narrow point of view.  He raises some interesting points about links to Nazism and fascism in arab political organizations, but this could be seen as similar to the Finnish link with Germany as an ally against Russia in WWII.  (Part of his overall assumption in the book that ideas lead society - whereas my view is that ideas are often made to fit one's own personal advantage - like his interpretation of Israel/Palestinian history.)

To find:
The Gulag Archipelago
- Cambodian revolution
Arthur Koestler - Darkness At Noon
Panait Istrati - The Confessions of a Loser/The Other Flame
Karl Popper
Star of Redemption - Rosenzweig
Philippe Sollers
Marcel Pleynet (Tel Quel magazine)
Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt
Are We Rome? Cullen Murphy
Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon

Gabriel Dumont - George Woodcock (1975)

A book with some points of interest, but for a view of the Métis rebellion the biographies of Louis Riel give a better overview.  If you have already read a Riel biography, most of the historical information in the Dumont book is very much a repeat.  In the early part of the book there is a bit of a picture of the life of Dumont and the Métis before the railroad, but it is a limited picture.  I'm not sure if it is because of a lack of historical sources (this was an illiterate culture) or simply it is not Woodcock's focus.  It would be interesting to have more of a picture or a flavour of that life.
Gabriel was obviously a forceful and very intelligent man - naturally so - both in politics and in his world of hunting and living in the land.  It would also be interesting to see more of this side of him, but again he and most of his circle were illiterate, so I suppose there are  no sources.

Yet again, the church and organized religion look bad in this story, siding with the authorities in a situation where the Métis were so obviously being unjustly treated.  The same is true of politics and politicians, both during the rebellion and when Gabriel was travelling later in the States and in Quebec - no interest in the man, his people and his cause beyond the short term political usefulness he might have to them.
The end of the book is, for me, the most compelling part.  I would love to know what Dumont thought of his time with Buffalo Bill, his time in New York and the other big cities of the east coast - such a different world and not only physically, but socially and emotionally as well.  Dumont also mentions the Sioux that worked with Buffalo Bill - I can picture them there is New York with Dumont, who they would have known or at least heard of, talking of the vanished world they knew together, and maybe laughing incredulously and the world of New York and theatre.  There is also a beautiful image of his last years living in a small cabin on his nephew's farm, spending his days fishing, hunting, wandering in the prairies and hills, visiting friends and companions from his past.  He still owned his land, but he made no attempt to live the life of farming.  A stranger in this new world, it is as if he rejected it utterly and kept alive the last elements of the life, now lost, that he had loved so much.  "The years passed, and now they were uneventful, for Gabriel was no longer a man to whom his fellows called for leadership, though sometimes they asked his advice, nor did he wish to lead them.  He withdrew into the rhythms of the hunting years, doing a little trading, catching his own meat and fish, and always pleased when he had a few skins to sell at one of the stores in Batoche or Duck Lake... He thought of that past without guilt and without rancour, glorying in his own deeds as Homer's heroes must have done, yet sad always for that vanished primitive world to which he had been so superbly adapted. (p. 250 -251)
As an aside, I wonder if that is not the fate of all older people in our modern world.  Things change so much, the world you loved and knew so well disappears, leaving you marooned with your memories and your past...  Ties in with immigrants too, and with developing countries where people crowd into the big cities, leaving their life and culture behind for a completely unfamiliar universe.

Samarcande - Amin Malouf

Curieux petit livre (en français) qui a l'air un peu vieux genre, à moins que ce ton ne vienne de la voix du narrateur, homme du 19e siècle.
L'histoire se divise en deux parties:  une biographie imaginaire d'Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), suivie par une histoire qui se déroule en Iran à l'époque de la révolution constitutionnelle (1906).  Cette deuxième histoire est basée de près sur les vrais événements et personnages de la révolution iranienne - William Shuster et Howard Baskerville par exemple.
Malouf semble explorer la culture politique et les structures de pouvoir au Moyen Orient, et comment ils n'ont guère changé depuis le temps d'Omar Khayyam:  hiérarchiques, corrompus, contrôlés par les intérêts d'une élite politique et par l'établissement religieux.  Les rapports de soutien entre ces élites et la religion officielle ou organisée y sont évidents.
Comme il fait souvent Malouf miroite l'Occident du point de vue du Proche Orient.  Cette réflexion n'est pas très positive - exploitateurs prêts à sacrifier la liberté et la vie des peuples pour notre avantage économique.  Nous adorons déferler sur le monde le drapeau des droits et de la liberté jusqu'au moment où nos intérêts économiques entrent en jeu...  Il y a des parallèles modernes dans l'Iran de nos jours (théocratie et Gardes Révolutionnaires); en Israel (droits et liberté des Palestiniens et le rôle de E.U.); en Syrie (la lutte actuelle entre les élites Alawite et le reste du pays); Egypte (élites vs. le peuple; rôle douteux des E.U.)
Dans ces livre Malouf utilise le passé pour illuminer la vérité du présent au Proche Orient.

En vue de cette longue histoire de culture politique inchangée, on peut se demander comment les choses vont jamais changer....  Ce n'est pas seulement question de politique mais aussi de changement de culture, de rapports personnels, de société en général.

Why am I here?

I am an avid reader - on many subjects, in three languages.  This blog is an attempt to bring some order to the books I read, the tangents I go off on, and the tangents I don't want to lose track of.  I have lists of books I want to track down - sometimes I forget if I have tracked them down or not, and don't realize I've already read a particular book until I'm standing in front of it on the library shelf...