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“The Book of Disappearance: A Novel” by Ibtisam Azem

The Book of Disappearance: A Novel by Ibtisam Azem Translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon 256 pgs. | pb | 9780815611110 | $19.95 Syracuse University Press Review by Grant Barber   This wonderful, important second novel by Ibtisam Azem in English translation came out just in time for the observance of Women ...

“The Book of Collateral Damage” by Sinan Antoon

The Book of Collateral Damage by Sinan Antoon Translated from the Arabic by James Richardson 312 pgs. | hc | 9780300228946 | $24.00 Yale Margellos Press Review by Grant Barber   Author Sinan Antoon is an Assoc. Professor at the Gallatin School of Individual Study of NYU. His undergraduate degree was in 1990 from ...

“Dark Constellations” by Pola Oloixarac

Dark Constellations by Pola Oloixarac Translated from the Spanish by Roy Kesey 216 pgs. | pb | 9781616959234 | $22.00 Soho Press Reviewed by Grant Barber     Dark Constellations, the second novel in translation by the author of Savage Theories, continues the intriguing, complex narratives of science, ...

Latest Review: "I am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan"

The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Grant Barber on I am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan translated by Eliza Griswold, and out last month from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Because I don’t know much about the tradition of Afghan landays, though I do find it both fascinating ...

I am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan

On that September 11th I had a conversation with a professor friend who was teaching a creative writing class that evening. He questioned, “What can I possibly teach when all of this has happened?” While the dismay and grief were his reference, the question touches on a matter much deeper: what is art’s purpose? Either ...

The Corpse Washer

Antoon gives us a remarkable novel that in 184 pages captures the experience of an Iraqi everyman who has lived through the war with Iran in the first half of the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War over the Kuwaiti invasion, and then the 2003 war. Jawad is the youngest child from a Baghdad family. His father, like his father before ...

Latest Review: "The Corpse Washer" by Sinan Antoon

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is from Grant Barber on Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer, from Yale University Press. Grant is not only a keen bibliophile, and an Episcopal priest living on the south shore of Boston, but has reviewed for Three Percent for forever, basically, and sometimes also performs as ...