Two reviews from Barbara Meade
While I was reading Ahmed Rashid’s new book, Pakistan on the Brink (Viking, $26.95), I recollected a novel I had read about six months ago that takes place in the Northern Tribal Area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Never have I more fully understood the saying, “all politics is local,” than I did in reading this beautiful short novel, The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad (Riverhead, $25,95). The power of the family, the power of the tribe, and the power of religious belief and ancestral codes all pervade this entirely sad and moving story and in doing so, remarkably convey more about the barriers to peace in this region than any nonfiction history or current events titles. Publishers Weekly wrote about this novel: “A shadowy, enchanting journey…A gripping book, as important for illuminating the current state of this region as it is timeless in its beautiful imagery and rhythmic prose.”
Click here to listen to a wonderful interview with Jamil Ahmad on NPR’s "Morning Edition"
Another short but hypnotic novel, The Sickness ($14.95), has just been published by Tin House Books, a small literary press in Portland. After reading the first chapter I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of the writing, The author, Alberto Barrera Tyszka, is a Venezuelan writer and journalist and his book is translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. It’s difficult for me to know whether the luminosity in the writing comes from the original language or its translation, but whichever it is, The Sickness was shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The story revolves around a father-son relationship in which both are doctors who have been committed to being open and forthright with their patients about their diagnoses and prognoses, but when the son receives confirmation of his father’s terminal lung cancer, his filial devotion turns into an open conflict with his medical ethics. It’s the moral ambiguities that make this novel interesting but lyrical turns of the prose that make it radiant.
- Barbara Meade
Lapham’s Quarterly - Spring 2012
Edited and published by Lewis H. Lapham, a former editor of Harper’s Magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly ($15) boasts a rich and historical retinue of essays, stories and poems, some written specifically for each volume and others added from thousands of years of the literary canon. Despite its relative youth in the world of magazine literature, Lapham’s Quarterly has already established a prestigious history (4 years in, it already possesses a nomination for the National Magazine Award, alongside such fantastic names like The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Sun).
Its newest edition “Means of Communication,” does not disappoint. In Mr. Lapham’s Preamble, our editor recognizes that “new means of communication give rise to new structures of feeling and thoughts.” His inventory of contributors ranges from the Greek philosopher Lucretius to the contemporary novelist Toni Morrison.
Click here for more.
-Anders T. Rosen
It is often said, half in jest, what separates humans from
the rest of the Kingdom Animalia is
not our vast and unmatched intellect, nor our ability to generate sarcasm, but
the presence of a fifth appendage on each hand—the inimitable opposable
thumb.
