The International Prize for Arabic Fiction

I just heard about the newly created "International Prize for Arabic Fiction," which this year went to Egyptian author Baha Taher for his book 'Sunset Oasis', a book that explores one man's existential crisis. The winning book will get published throughout the Arab world, and translated outside of it, thus helping the author gain a wider readership. The cash awards included; which are: $10,000 for shortlisted authors, $50,000 for the winner; should also give a good boost to authors in the Arab worldm a region where it is nearly impossible to live off of writing up to now. The list...

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Lawrence Lessig's Book 'The Future of Ideas' Now Free

Lawrence Lessig and his publisher Random House have released another one of his books "The Future of Ideas" under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect and argues that as the Internet faces the challenges of intellectual property laws, it should not become so controlled that it discourages innovation and creativity in the digital world. He explains the historical context of the Internet and its relationship to the "commons" and argues that, for the Internet to evolve and be an open...

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Blue Ocean Strategy

Yesterday I finished reading "Blue Ocean Strategy (How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant)" by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. The book explores the authors' vision of the kind of expanding, competitor-free markets that innovative companies can navigate. Unlike "red oceans," which are well explored and crowded with competitors, "blue oceans" represent "untapped market space" and the "opportunity for highly profitable growth. Using dozens of examples, from Southwest Airlines and the Cirque du Soleil to Curves and Starbucks, they present the approaches these companies took to open new doors for their businesses and reach out to...

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The Zahir (Paulo Coelho)

I just finished reading "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho. The first book I read by him was "The Alchemist", which I found to be a very inspiring book that I really enjoyed; after that I've been going back to read one of his books every now and then. The Zahir feels a bit different from his other books, maybe because it feels closer to reality, takes place in a modern day setting and all, but it still has the same inspiring style that makes you take a step back to look at your life, certain aspects of it, evaluate yourself...

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The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

I finished reading "The Kite Runner", the debut novel by Khaled Hosseini this morning. I heard a lot about this book and have been wanting to read it for so long, and the fact that the movie will be out soon made me want to read it even sooner. The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical...

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Seras-Tu Là ? (Guillaume Musso)

This morning, before going to work, I finished reading "Seras-tu là ?" (Will You Be There?) by French novelist Guillaume Musso. The idea of the book revolves around an essential question that almost everybody must have asked themselves at some point in their lives: If you had the opportunity to, what would you change in your life? If you had to do it again, what remorse, what regret would you choose to obliterate? The story follows Elliott, a successful 60 year old surgeon, who lives in San Francisco and whose life is illuminated by his daughter Angie. He would be...

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The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón)

Last night, I finished reading "The Shadow of the Wind" by Spanish novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I first came across this book in a Waterstone's in London, and it seemed very interesting, still I didn't buy it because I had already bought a bunch of books and couldn't keep going forever putting things in the already heavy shopping basket. A year and a bit more later, early this year, I encountered the book again at another Waterstone's, only this time in Manchester, and it that's when I bought it. The events of the story take place in Barcelona in the...

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Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Jimmy Carter)

This morning I finished reading former US President Jimmy Carter's book by the name "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid". I've been wanting to read this book ever since it was published, I found it in Tunisia in the Al Kitab bookstore but it was too expensive, so I posptponed and bought it from Prime Megastore on my last trip to Jordan. In this book, Jimmy Carter tackles the Middle East crisis and the question of Israel's peace with its neighbors--in particular, how Israeli sovereignty and security can coexist permanently and peacefully with Palestinian nationhood. It is a comprehensive and well-informed...

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The Art Of The Start (Guy Kawasaki)

Today I finished reading "The Art Of The Start" by Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist at Apple Computer and current Venture Capitalist. This is the second book I've read by Guy, the first being "Rules For Revolutionaries". This book, as its name suggests, is about the art of starting a business and how each and every task at hand should be handled from; from identifying your customer base and writing a business plan to raising capital and bootstrapping to recruiting, establishing partnerships and building brand identity. I think the book is very useful for someone starting a business, giving them...

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Winning (Jack Welch)

Last night I finished reading "Winning" by Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001, transforming the industrial giant from a sleepy "Old Economy" company with a market capitalization of $4 billion to a dynamic new one worth nearly half a trillion dollars. "Winning" describes the management wisdom that Welch built up through his four and a half decades of work at GE, focusing on actual management techniques. The book is divided into five major sections that cover management from all sides: Underneath It All: Here he talks about missions and cultural values, as well as...

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Rules For Revolutionaries (Guy Kawasaki)

I just finished reading Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services by Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist at Apple Computer and current Venture Capitalist, in collaboration with previous coauthor Michele Moreno. This is the first book I've read by Guy Kawasaki, and I know it won't be the last; I really liked his entertaining light style of writing, that is clear and straight to the point. The book is divided into three parts, whose titles alone show the book's style and tone. 1. Create Like a God: This part discusses the way...

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Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (David Allen)

This weekend I finished reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, the personal productivity and self-management guru. I've heard so so much about this book over the past years, read many reviews, went through so many productivity blogs that base their ideas and advice on the teachings of this book, and well, I just had to read it. I can confirm that the hype is well deserved, this book can be a life-changing one if you choose to apply the simple ideas and tips in it. It will take you from being swamped with things...

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Les Cendres De Carthage (Abdelaziz Belkhodja)

Last weekend I finished reading "Les Cendres De Carthage" (The Ashes Of Carthage) by Tunisian writer Abdelaziz Belkhodja. This is the second book I've read by him, the first being "Le Retour De L'Eléphant" (The Return Of The Elephant) that I read a few years ago. This work of fiction revolves around an archaeological dig in the ancient city of Carthage, close to the capital of Tunisia, where the great ancient library of Carthage is discovered, then taking an unexpected twist into a thriller putting politicians and intelligence services from Tunisia and the United States face to face. It's...

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Common Sense Business (Steve Gottry)

Last night I finished reading Steve Gottry's book Common Sense Business : Starting, Operating, and Growing Your Small Business--In Any Economy! I guess the title says it all and pretty much explains what the book is about. I went through this book pretty quickly, it's an easy simple read, in which the author pulls from his business experience and the ups and downs he's been through to share his experience with the reader and give advice on how to start, operate and grow a small business. It covers the whole life cycle of a small business, how to build on...

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The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

A couple of days ago I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point", another business book about how the littlest of things can make a big difference. The book explores the concept of "epidemics" and how ideas, products, messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do, and what it is that makes them tip over and become an epidemic; starting from the influential kinds of people who can spread the message, to the stickiness of the message itself and the context in which it came to exist. It's a very interesting read and provides a new way of thinking for...

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The Long Tail (Chris Anderson)

A couple of days ago, I finished reading Chris Anderson's book "The Long Tail", which explains and advocates why the future of business is selling less of more. Chris Anderson, who is editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, wrote an article called "The Long Tail" in Wired that became so popular and famous, he started a blog about it and then expanded it into a book. In short the phrase "The Long Tail" is to describe certain business and economic models where products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals...

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The Search (John Battelle)

I finally got around to reading John Battelle's book "The Search", which is about how Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture. I heard a lot about this book, it's a really interesting topic, and I also enjoy reading John's searchblog quite often, so obviously it's been on my reading list for quite a while. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I went through it so quickly; It's very well written and it handles the topic of search, its history, its players (mainly revolving around Google and its history though), how much it...

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One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

As usual, I'm using the extra free time I get on vacation to catch up on some reading. I just finished the book "One Hundred Years Of Solutide" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature. The book tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family and its unforgettable men and women, their times, their struggles, their curse and damnation - the solitude that would finally destroy them and the universe that they created and inhabited. This is one of...

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The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

I finished reading "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold last night. I came across this book a number of times throughout the past years, and I thought it would be an interesting read, so it's been on my to-read list for a while, the only thing that made me get around to reading it faster is that Peter Jackson is currently working on making a movie based on this book, and so I wanted to read the book before the movie was released. The novel tells the story of Susie, a murdered 14 year old girl who recalls what happened...

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The Secret Life Of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

Yesterday I finished reading "The Secret Life Of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. I'd picked the book up from the Waterstone's in Manchester's Trafford Centre a few months ago while I was shopping for books there, and I remembered hearing about it being a good read somewhere, most probably on a friend's blog. The book follows the story of 14-year-old Lily Owens, neglected by her father, isolated on their Georgia peach farm, and the trip she takes with her nanny Rosaleen in search of the truth about her mother, ending up in Tiburon South Carolina with three black beekeeping sisters....

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A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby)

This weekend I finished reading "A Long Way Down" by Nick Hornby. As with the other Nick Hornby books I read, this one was a delight as well, a light read, humorous and full of pop culture references. High Fidelity is still my favourite book by him, and also my favourite movie based on one of his books, but this one isn't far behind. The story goes as follows: On New Year's Eve, four people decide to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of a London tower block. By coincidence, they end up all four on the roof of...

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The Devil and Miss Prym (Paulo Coelho)

I recently finished reading another one of Paulo Coelho's books: The Devil and Miss Prym, which was a pretty good read. As usual Coelho touches upon another important subject that leaves you thinking, re-thinking and exploring your inner self. The book explores the parameters of Good and Evil, the eternal struggle between them, and their impact on the human soul, passing a message that there is no such thing as a person, or as humans in general, being inherently "good" or "evil", all humans have both good and evil within them and what defines them are their choices, an idea...

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Author JK Rowling has finally revealed the title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. It will be called "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", she announced on her official website. Speculation about the plot has surrounded the book after Rowling admitted two characters will die - some think it could be Harry Potter himself. The book's publication date is not known yet, but as usual, it is expected to be a really big seller, just like its predecessors. Sales of all Harry Potter titles now total more than 52 million worldwide. » Harry Potter Books...

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Another Bookworm Tag

So another bookworm tag is making the rounds; I've been tagged by Reflect Upon. Tag rules: Grab the closest book to you, open page 123, scroll down to the 5th sentence, post the next 3 sentences on your blog, name the book and author, then tag 3 people. So here goes... "They came to a low room with a sloping roof (a penthouse, it seemed, built on to the north end of the house). Its walls were of clean stone, but they were mostly covered with green hanging mats and yellow curtains." -- The Lord Of The Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien...

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The 10 Best Books of 2006

A list of the 10 best books of 2006 compiled by the NY Times: - Absurdistan (Gary Shteyngart) - The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (Amy Hempel) - The Emperor's Children (Claire Messud) - The Lay of the Land (Richard Ford) - Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl) - Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir (Danielle Trussoni) - The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Lawrence Wright) - Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (Nathaniel Philbrick) - The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Michael Pollan) - The Places In Between (Rory Stewart)...

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The Fifth Mountain - Paulo Coelho

Ever since I read "The Alchemist", I've been wanting to read more of Paulo Coelho's books, and a few days ago, I started reading "The Fifth Mountain", which I finished yesterday. This book tells the story of the prophet Elijah, his flight from Gilead and the time he spent in Zarephath. Coelho delves into the prophet's character, revealing the thoughts, doubts, and discoveries that Elijah must have experienced as he struggled to find his course in life amidst the confusion of war and political turmoil. The story is really inspirational and as usual Paulo injects a lot of wisdom into...

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Paulo Coelho Free Online Event

An interesting free online event for all Paulo Coelho fans... At 3 PM ET (7 PM GMT) on Wednesday, October 11th, Paulo Coelho will be discussing his books and answering readers' questions online. To participate in this free event, readers will need to register and login at 3 PM ET (7 PM GMT) on October 11th. Here's the event's registration page. Throughout this web event readers can submit questions to Paulo and hear his responses. The questions will be posed to Paulo by a moderator --- Beliefnet Spirituality Editor Valerie Reiss. While Paulo is talking, participants can view a slide...

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Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

I just finished reading "Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell. The book is about the kinds of decisions and snap judgements we take in the first fractions of seconds we're confronted with something, how that happens, and how we have this hidden ability to "thin slice" situations, mind read the people in front of us and react according to a wealth of information that is stocked away behind a closed door in what is called our "adaptive unconscious". It goes on to tell us to trust these snap judgements of ours more often, and...

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How To Be Good (Nick Hornby)

In the halftime of the England-Sweden match last night, I finished reading "How To Be Good" by Nick Hornby. I'm quite a fan of Nick Hornby and his style of writing. I also really like the movie adaptations of his books. Thanks to my friend Sleepless Jojo for lending me this book. I'm going to quote some of the Amazon review on this one because it basically says all I have to say about the book's story. How to Be Good, Katie Carr is certainly trying to be. That's why she became a GP. That's why she cares about Third...

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Saturday - Ian McEwan

I just finished reading "Saturday" by Ian McEwan, who won the Booker prize for his book "Amsterdam". This is the second book I read by him after his other bestseller "Atonement", that I read almost a year ago. This book follows an ordinary man throughout a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns a bit nightmarish. Henry Perowne–a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children–plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne's day is...

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Angels & Demons (Dan Brown)

Today in the lunch break, I finished reading Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. For people who have already read The Da Vinci Code, this book by the same author isn't really that different. In fact, the structure of both stories and how they are told is pretty much identical. So, if you liked one of them, it's sure you'll like the other. This book has a bit more suspense and more twists in it, which I found really cool. In The Da Vinci Code, I was able to guess who the bad guy was pretty early in the...

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High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

Last night, I finished reading Nick Hornby's bestseller "High Fidelity". I've been wanting to read this book ever since I saw the movie, starring John Cusack and Jack Black, which I really really liked. I enjoyed the book a lot, and now I see what a great job they did with the movie transforming the book to film. I really like Nick Hornby's humour and his first-person narrator style of writing. The book is about a thirtysomething English guy who runs a London record store called "Championship Vinyl". He's very serious about music and sells all these rare albums and...

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The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Last night, I finished reading "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. Ok, I know you can't believe I only read it now, everyone already said that to me, and looked at me in that weird way as if I was living on Mars for the last few years. But well, I only got to read it now, and I totally loved it. A friend of mine told me a few days ago when I started reading "The Alchemist" that it was the kind of book that would either change your life or change your conception of things. Well, he was right,...

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Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

"Memoirs of a Geisha" is one of the books I've been wanting to read for a very long time, and the fact that a movie based on the novel is out, only made me want to do it faster, because seeing the movie before reading the book would kind of put me off reading it for a while. Last night, I finished reading the novel, and well, I just loved it. It's written in such a great style, and takes you through this amazing journey, which is the life of the Geisha Sayuri Nitta. The book totally sucks you in...

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Secret Smile - Nicci French

I just finished reading "Secret Smile" by Nicci French, which is a really good psychological thriller. To not risk giving the story away, I'll just give you what is written on the back of the book, that caught me and made me buy the book in the first place. When Miranda Cotton returns from work to find her new boyfriend, Brendan, reading her diary, she ends the relationship and throws him out of her flat. Getting Brendan out of her life, however, is not so easy. Two weeks later her sister, Kerry, phones her in ecstasy. She's in love....

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L'étranger

Last night I finished reading "L'étranger" by Albert Camus. Thanks to my dear friend Saqf for giving me this book too. I haven't read in French for a very long time. The last time I did, I started reading "The Lord of the Rings" and then stopped halfway through the first chapter because it just didn't feel right. In books, like movies, I think it's best to always read or watch it in its original language; A lot of things are always lost in translation. Anyway this was a really good read. I really like the style in which it...

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Harry Potter Books Go Digital

J.K. Rowling has made all six Potter novels available for audio downloads. The digital audiobooks are being released by the Random House Audio Trade Group. They can be purchased through Apple's iTunes store, for prices ranging from $32.95 for a single book to $249 for the whole series, which, according to Random House, includes a "full color digital booklet" and "previously unreleased readings" by Rowling. Rowling's fantasy series, most recently "Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince," has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide in print editions and more than 5 million as audiobooks, narrated by Grammy winner Jim Dale. But...

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The Da Vinci Code

I finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" a couple of nights ago, and well it was a really good read. I've been wanting to read this book for over 2 years actually. I wanted to buy it from Jordan last year, but it was sold out, and when I found it in Tunisia it was in French, and this year when I went to Jordan it was banned! So, I had to find a way to order it online and that's what I did. Back to the book. I really enjoyed reading it; it sucked me in and I found...

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The Hobbit

Last night, I finally finished reading "The Hobbit" by J.R.R Tolkien, the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his greatest adventure. And what a read that was. I have to thank my dear friend Saqf again for giving me this amazing book and encouraging me to read it right away. You rock man! I totally enjoyed every bit of it. My imagination ran wild; middle earth was recreated in my brain with every tiny detail; I took the trip with Bilbo, the hobbit, Gandalf and their dwarve friends over and under hills, through forests, across rivers and all over middle earth....

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Reading "The Hobbit"

As the reading section on the right column of my blog shows, I'm reading "The Hobbit" by J.R.R Tolkien. First of all, a big thank you to my dear friend Saqf for this wonderful gift. I'm enjoying every second of it :) It's taking me a bit longer than it usually does for me to read a book because I barely find time to sit down and read these days. Anyway the book has truly sucked me in and I love it. The story is really cool and catching, and my imagination is working on overdrive. Something I find really...

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Bookworm

Roba tagged me with this book meme. So here goes: Number of books I own: I have no idea. I've been reading books ever since I was a kid, so how many I have in my collection or how many I have read is just beyond me. Last book I bought: "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. Last book I read: "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss, and I'm currently reading "The Hobbit" by J.R.R Tolkien. Five books that mean a lot to me: Every book is special in its own way, so I'll be picking five random...

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Eats, Shoots and Leaves

A few days ago, I finished reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. The book self-describes itself as "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation", and it sure is. This woman is very passionate about punctuation. I first knew about this book when Newsweek reviewed it upon its release, and I've been wanting to get it ever since. What caught me is this funny little story on the back of the book: A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter,...

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Today, I finished reading "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon. It's such a light and great book, I just flew through it. It is a murder mystery told by an autistic 15 year old boy who is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. I loved the way the book was written and how simple...

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Atonement - Ian McEwan

I finished reading "Atonement" by Ian McEwan today. When I bought this book a few months ago, I had never heard of it nor its writer. I started reading it and the first couple of chapters didn't really get me that attached to the book as it was mostly character development, so I kept leaving it for a while and coming back a number of times. That's until the story picked up and things started becoming interesting, then really interesting, then amazing and I was sucked in. This is a truly great book. The characters feel so real and are...

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Judging Books

They say that you should never judge a book by it's cover, I say you shouldn't even judge it by it's first two chapters. Many times, while reading a new book, especially novels, I'd find it so boring in it's first chapters that I'd start to think about quitting or it'd take me so long to just get through a chapter. But then when I get past the first chapters that the writer obviously wanted to use as a long introduction of the characters and to give some background to build his story on, the book becomes a lot more...

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Book Fair

We just came back from the international book fair, and man are we tired, we're just exhausted. It was full of people as usual, although more bearable than the first days of its opening. There were basically the same countries that come with their books every year, but I did notice a little change in the type of books that were being exhibited. Religious books are still dominating, although less then last year, and the two new types of books that are coming strongly into center stage are children's books and books about health, beauty and macrobiotics. The thing that...

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Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

I bought "Siddharta" by Hermann Hesse from a used book store in downtown Tunis a couple of weeks ago, and only got around to finishing it today although it's not that long. Not much time left for me to read these days with work and a bunch of other things taking up my time. When I first picked this book, I thought it was about the life of Siddharta, The Buddha. It turns out it's not. It's about the spiritual journey of an Indian man called Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha. He actually meets the Buddha but doesn't...

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Used Book Shops

I've always been one big book worm. Ever since my childhood I'd go through one book after the other. I guess it's because of my love for stories and letting my imagination run wild in recreating them and the worlds they happen in. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a used book shop in Colisée Saula in Manar 2, and ever since then I've been hooked and actively looking for other ones like it. I've come across another interesting one in Rue d'Angleterre where I bought Siddharta by Hermann Hesse, the book I'm currently reading. It's quite...

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Important Arab Books & Content Statistics

- Arab countries' output of books represents just 1.1 percent of the world total, although Arabs constitute 5% of the world's population. This is less than what a country such as Turkey produces, with a population about one-quarter that of the Arab countries. - The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates. - Print runs of Arab books are very low, ranging for the average novel between 1,000 and 3,000 copies only. A book that sells just 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller. - Arab book publishing has been threatened by three...

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The Gardens Of Light

I just finished reading "The Gardens Of Light" by Amin Maalouf. The book tells the story of Mani - the painter, mystic, physician and prophet - exploring his life and journey. It's a very interesting book that takes the reader back to those times when the great Roman and Persian empires were in their battle to control the Middle East, and followers of different religions were fighting against each other for ascendancy. It lets you live the journey of Mani while he preached his doctrine of humility, tolerance and love. I really liked the way the story was told and...

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter’s created J.K. Rowling said that she is ready to release the sixth installment of now famous 'Harry Potter' series of novel. The sixth book in the series is entitled "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Rowling has already revealed that the sixth book will see one of the characters killed, but she has given no hints as to who is doomed. J.K. Rowling added more spice to the occasion by unveiling some excerpts from the novel: 1. Half-Blood Prince was neither Harry nor Voldemort. 2. She also told names of three of the chapter titles: - Chapter two...

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Life of Pi

Last Night, or to be more precise, early this morning, I finished reading "Life of Pi", a great novel by Yann Martel. I heard a lot about this book and read a number of reviews about it, so when I found it in Prime Megastore, I bought it right away and jumped into it immediately. I was sucked into the story, and I loved the way it was flowing and how the writer was telling it. It's an amazing story, beautiful and amusing too. It's about a teenage Indian boy called Pi Patel and his journey with religion, his...

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Tahar Ben Jelloun wins Impac Literary Award

Moroccan author, Tahar Ben Jelloun, was named the winner yesterday of the $120,000 International Impac Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest prize for a single work of fiction published in English. Mr. Ben Jelloun won for his fact-based novel, "This Blinding Absence of Light", about a soldier imprisoned in a desert concentration camp after taking part in an abortive coup against King Hassan II of Morocco in 1971. The book was written in French, and Mr. Ben Jelloun will receive three-fourths of the prize money, with the rest going to Linda Coverdale, who translated the novel. Mr. Ben Jelloun, born...

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Le Retour de l'éléphant

Ok, so I'm a book worm. I bought the book "Le Retour de l'Eléphant" ("The Return of the Elephant") by Abdelaziz Belkhodja on Sunday, and finished reading it yesterday, Monday. As I wrote yesterday in my Reading section on the left, this is a nice futuristic humourous fiction about a time when Carthage is the richest and most powerful city in the world again, immigrants come from the north to the south, Iraq watches over the embargo on the