“Shalimar the Clown : A Novel,” by Salman Rushdie (Random House, 2005).
Salman Rushdie is at Disney Hall, addressing a near-capacity audience as part of the Music Center’s 2006 Speaker Series. He has come this March 1 evening to talk about politics and art, truth and tyranny, free and forbidden speech. He has come, also, to [...]
Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood, A Memoir of Growing Up Female in a Muslim World, Taslima Nasrin, Translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar, Steerforth Press: 308 pp., $26
Less than a decade ago, Muslim clerics in Bangladesh issued a series of fatwas against a 31-year-old woman who had written a novel they found offensive. The woman, [...]
Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews, edited by Houman Sarshar. The Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History/ The Jewish Publication Society: 458 pp., $110
In his introduction to “Esther’s Children,” editor Houman Sarshar speaks of a time when, 6 years old and about to start elementary school, he discovered his legacy as an Iranian Jew. [...]
A chronicle of Iran’s Jews from the Megillah to the 20th century tells a story that few people know.
In his introduction to Esther’s Children,” (Jewish Publication Society, $110) editor Houman Sarshar speaks of a time when, at 6 years old and about to start elementary school, he discovered his legacy as an Iranian Jew. Over [...]
I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters by Rabih Alameddine. W.W. Norton: 288 pp., $23.95
Rabih Alameddine’s new novel unfolds like a secret, guarded too long, which is at last pushing toward the light: It moves in jagged lines, flows forward and backward andsideways. It grows by bits and pieces, each one as thrilling, as [...]
Review: An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender (Doubleday; 242 pages; $22.95)
With a voice as clear as water and a hand that is honest, light and sincere in its intentions, Aimee Bender steers her reader into the depths of her heroine’s private hell. In this fairy tale, Mona Gray is a 20-year-old math [...]
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