reviews
Books – Sexuality and Faith in Bitter, Humorous Embrace by Leila Marouane
by Michael Teague. Mohammed Ben Mokhtar is a self-made man who holds a high profile in the world of Parisian finance. He is also suffering from an identity crisis in which [...]
Q&A with Director and Writer Reine Mitri on Her Banned Film “In this Land Lay Graves of Mine”
by Angele Ellis. Ellis: Watching “In This Land,” this viewer was affected by how the film moves back and forth between elegy, emotional exorcism, and indictment of [...]
“A Place in the World” an Award Winning Novel by Cinda Crabbe MacKinnon: a Critical Review.
by Rina Brundu. The geographical and cultural background of the award winning novel “A Place in the World” (2013) by Cinda Crabbe MacKinnon is a country where “The drug [...]
Dying to Reach Europe: The African Immigrant Crisis
Reviewed by Aisha K. Nasser. Media accounts normalize the tally of illegal African immigrants drowning while crossing the Mediterranean. Eritrean novelist Abu Bakr Khaal [...]
Broken Dreams: Love, Corruption, and the Plight of Foreign Workers in Israel
by Lynne Rogers. Kate Jessica Raphael describes her novel, “Murder Under the Bridge, a Palestine Mystery,” as “the product of my imagination and experience – the [...]
Tawfiq al-Hakim: Foretelling the Youth Revolution
by Nada Ramadan Elnahla. In 1984, Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898-1987) – a major literary and intellectual figure in Egypt and the Arab world who contributed to the development of [...]
Before Time Erases the Memories of Exile
by Lynne Rogers. The short film, “Still Life” begins with an elderly man aimlessly puttering in his Sidon apartment that has temporarily lost its electricity. With every [...]
Etel Adnan’s ‘THE ARAB APOCALYPSE’
by Mona Takieddine Amyuni. In a meeting with my students at the American University of Beirut on December 14, 2000, the Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan told us that she [...]
As 20th Century Begins, British ‘Orientalism’ Tool of Colonialism
by D.W. Aossey. The Hollywood epic, “Lawrence of Arabia,” immortalized the familiar story of T.E. Lawrence. But few know that proponents of the Orientalist ideologies [...]
Countering the Paradigm of Arab Othering Through Art
Contemporary Arab Photography, Video and Mixed Media Art: View From Inside By Karin Adrian von Roques Schilt Publishing Amsterdam, NL, 2014 by Rebecca Joubin. The beautiful [...]
Novelist Salwa Bakr Dares to Say it Aloud
by Elie Chalala. Revolution’s successes and failures; the taboos broken, how political Islam’s “holiness” mask dropped; the intelligentsia’s flight to the past [...]
“Sherazade”: Seeking an Arab Identity in 20th Century Paris
by David Aossey. In the spirit of assessing the insidious reach of 21st century Post-colonialism (as opposed to, say, watching it shrink and disappear in the rear view mirror [...]
Medieval Mediterranean History: Putting Religion in its Place
by Bobby Gulshan. Reconstructions of the Middle Ages usually invoke romantic images of brave knights, scheming kings, zealous holy warriors and legendary locales of antique [...]
Slave to History: A Moor in the New World
The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami Pantheon Books, 2014, pp. 324. In her new novel, Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami, turns to the 1500’s Spanish conquest [...]
Living with voices: magical realism in war-torn Iran
by Lynne Rogers Afsaneh, A Novel From Iran By Moniru Ravanipur Translated from the Persian by Rebecca Joubin Ibex Publishers, 2014, pp. 211 Moniru Ravanipur introduces her [...]
The Battle for the Arab Viewer A Tale of Two Networks
by Bobby Gulshan. The Battle for the Arab Viewer A film by Nordin Lasfar Icarus Films, 2012, 48 minutes Nordin Lasfar’s “The Battle for the Arab Viewer” puts the debate [...]
