Book Review - Schlesinger: the Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous

Writing from the White House in 1963 on the historian as political adviser, Arthur Schlesinger jnr suggested that “to smell the dust and sweat of battle, is surely to stimulate and amplify the historical imagination”.

Many people have wondered how the 43-year-old Schlesinger, a Harvard professor and award-winning historian, ended up working in the White House of John F Kennedy. 

The triumph of Richard Aldous’s new book is that it separates the myth from the reality, explaining both the seemingly inexorable rise of Schlesinger and how he contributed so much to the subsequent mythologising of the Kennedy era.

Born in 1917, the same year as Kennedy, Schlesinger was not a self-made man. Named Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger – his mother’s maiden name was Bancroft – he changed his middle name at the age of 15 to Meier so that he could imitate his father, the great Harvard historian Arthur Meier Schlesinger and become Arthur Schlesinger jnr. 

His father’s connections and influence certainly helped. His entry to Harvard was fast-tracked (he started two years before Kennedy) and his father played a major role in helping him publish his final-year thesis as a book in 1939.

There followed a prestigious fellowship at Harvard but despite his obvious abilities as a scholar, writer and original thinker, there were some awkward questions asked in 1942 because he hadn’t yet started on his PhD, something that was becoming increasingly necessary in the profession. 

Again Schlesinger snr came to the rescue, registering his son as his own PhD student and expediting the whole process. As Aldous notes, it “pushed the boundaries of academic propriety or even common sense to the breaking point”. 

The thesis was submitted later that same year, based on work that “Little Arthur” (as contemporaries sometimes called him) had been doing on US president Andrew Jackson. 

This later became The Age of Jackson, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1946, a remarkable achievement for the then 28-year-old historian, but helped greatly by the fact that his father sat on the advisory committee and only withdrew once it became clear that his son’s book was in the running.

This is not to deny the genius of Schlesinger jnr as an historian, just to note, as Aldous does, that he lived on the inside track, a placement that “served him so well throughout his rise to national prominence” and which so often “gave him a head start in an always competitive race”. 

The Age of Jackson was a ground-breaking work, described in the New York Times as “an original, brilliant and monumentally massive historical work”, and praised by the great historian Richard Hofstadter for its stylish writing and for making a “major contribution to American historiography”.

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Original Review on: www.irishtimes.com

Book Review - The Last Girl by Nadia Murad

In “The Last Girl,” Nadia Murad tells the story of her captivity along with other members of her Yazidi village of Kocho. It is an intimate account of what she calls “a slow, painful death — of the body and the soul.” 

As an insider, she is able to present a full portrait of her people as more than just victims. She writes with understandable anger but also with love, flashes of humor and dignity. 

In telling her story, Murad also offers glimpses of what has been wrought over recent decades in Iraq.

The Kurdish-speaking Yazidis live in northern Iraq, largely in underprivileged villages around Mount Sinjar. 

Most of their Kurdish and Arab neighbors view them with disdain, and they have long been persecuted for their religious beliefs. (Their monotheistic religion has elements in common with many other Middle Eastern faiths, including Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.)

The Yazidis inhabit disputed lands that Arabs and Kurds battle over, and they have often been caught between those competing nationalist ambitions. Murad writes that Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party pressured Yazidis to embrace identities as Arabs and Kurds, respectively, in their bids to assert claims to the land. (Both Arab and Kurdish nationalism imagine a basis for belonging in a most limited sense; their insistence on ethnic homogeneity, in a land where there is none, is doomed to leave out many.)

Internationally and in the region, very little attention was paid to the Yazidis — until the Islamic State came for them. Then they quickly became the subject of much reporting. 

The interest in the Yazidis, like stories about Middle Eastern Christians, perplexed many who had watched for decades as Iraqis experienced unrelenting horrors that traumatized much larger populations, with little global outcry. 

Resentment even arose over what seemed like an outsize focus on the suffering of minorities when, in absolute numbers, Muslims make up by far the most victims of the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Shiite militias and others committing violence in the name of Islam.

Of course, it’s important to pay close attention to what happens to minorities in all nations: They are the canaries in the coal mine, a gauge of tolerance, inclusiveness and equality in any society. 

But many observers close to the region are wary of giving a platform to stories of minority persecution in the Middle East, out of fear that such tales can demonize Islam by pinning any shortcomings of majority-Muslim societies on the religion itself. 

Regrettably, these stories are frequently shared for just such purposes, and those who disseminate them lack a sincere concern for the victims. This is true of both Western Islamophobes and Middle Eastern sectarians.

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Original Review on: www.washingtonpost.com

Book Review - Collusion by Luke Harding

The new book "Collusion" is about what the author, my guest Luke Harding, says appears to be an emerging pattern of collusion between Russia, Donald Trump and his campaign. Harding also writes about how Russia appears to have started cultivating Trump back in 1987. 

The book is based on original reporting as well as on the Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Harding met with Steele twice, once before and once after the dossier became public. 

Harding had a lot of good contacts to draw on for this book because he spent four years as the Moscow bureau chief for the British newspaper The Guardian. During that time, the Kremlin didn't like some of the stories Harding was investigating, and in 2011, he was expelled. 

In Moscow, he learned a lot about Russian espionage partly through his own experience of being spied on and harassed.

Harding is now a foreign correspondent for The Guardian. He's also the author of books about WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who fled to England, passed information to British intelligence about links between the Kremlin and the Russian mafia and then was assassinated with polonium-spiked tea.

Luke Harding, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So the dossier said that the Russian regime had been cultivating, supporting and assisting Donald Trump for at least five years with the goal of encouraging splits and divisions in the Western alliance. 

You write that the Russians had their eyes on Donald Trump as early as the 1970s when he married Ivana Trump, who is from Czechoslovakia. Why were they keeping an eye on him in the '70s? What were they looking for?

LUKE HARDING: Well, the KGB really forever has been interested in cultivating people, actually, who might be useful contacts for them, identifying targets for possible recruitments possibly to be agents. 

That's not saying that Donald Trump is an agent, but the point is that he would have been on their radar certainly by 1977 when he married Ivana, who came from Czechoslovakia, a kind of communist Eastern bloc country. 

And we know from Czechoslovak spy records de-classified last year that the spy agencies were in contact with Ivana's father, that they kept an eye on the Trumps in Manhattan throughout the 1980s. 

And we also know, from defectors and other sources, that whatever Prague learned, communist Prague, would have been funneled to the big guys in Moscow, to the KGB. So there would have been a file on Donald Trump.

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Original Review on: www.npr.org

Book Review - The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman

The almost supernaturally prolific American author Alice Hoffman has taken a busman’s holiday this year to pen a little fan fiction: a prequel to her own bestselling novel Practical Magic. 

The original book became the 1998 Hollywood romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as witchy sisters Gillian and Sally Owens. Now, in The Rules of Magic, set in 1950s New York, we are treated to the backstory of Gillian and Sally’s great-aunts, Frances and Jet.

Like all the females in the Owens family tree, Frances and Jet are witches descended from Salem escapee Maria Owens. More than 300 years ago, the teenage Maria was seduced and abandoned by Salem trial judge John Hathorne (real-life great-great-grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who added a “w” in his name to deflect the inevitable question).

The fact that Maria’s lover was a state-sponsored serial killer of women led the young witch to conclude – erroneously, one hopes – that all men are a bad thing. Thus before she went to her grave Maria decided to protect her female descendants by casting a spell to ensure that every male who loves an Owens woman will die, horribly and fast.

This spell makes life difficult for Frances and Jet, especially when they become sexually aware teenagers. In the summer that they go to stay with their Aunt Isabelle, at least four local lads – including an adorable pair of 17-year-old twins – come to shocking ends. 

Aunt Isabelle is sanguine about the whole thing, and encourages the girls to keep on loving boys anyway, saying wisely: “When you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse. It’s what life is, my girl.”

The girls’ brother, the irresistible wizard Vincent Owens, has a different problem. As a youth, he breaks the hearts of endless girls, before realising that he is gay. Yet just as he’s starting to enjoy himself, he remembers that he too is cursed to die young.

Hoffman has a soothing touch, so we quickly get over the various horrific tragedies with which her latest book is littered – any one of which would pole-axe us personally for life. It’s all the great circle of death, we comfort ourselves, as we stroll through the scented garden of Hoffman’s prose. 

In the book, Aunt Isabelle trades love remedies for women’s diamond rings. Hoffman herself has a spell for which any writer would trade a crate of diamonds – the ability to turn out one enchanting bestseller after another, more than 30 novels to date, and probably more by the time I have finished this review.

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Original Review on: www.theguardian.com

Book Review - Artemis by Andy Weir

Andy Weir, author of The Martian, takes readers to another desolate world, but instead of the Red Planet it's the moon, in his new novel, Artemis.

Weir takes readers on an exploration of the colonization of Earth's nearest neighbor in outer space, and it's not too far into the future. 

Most everything needed for the modules of the city of Artemis can be reasonably manufactured on the surface, along with the occasional supply and tourist runs from home. 

Each living habitat is named for a prominent member of the original Apollo programs, but each has distinct features associated with it, whether it is for the affluent or those barely able to scrape by and survive.

Living in the poorer end of Artemis is Jasmine Bashara, aka Jazz. She has talent and is quite intelligent but chooses to skate by. 

She works as a porter for the tourists and the citizens who sometimes want their packages from Earth handled discreetly. She blows a field test that would have gotten her a job taking tourists in EVA suits to explore the area around the original landing site of Apollo 11. 

Upset and not thinking clearly, Jazz receives an offer that promises more money than she can imagine if she can successfully pull off a dangerous assignment. She has the skills and the knowledge, but does she have the luck and equipment necessary to keep her in the clear when damage control begins?

Jazz is a compelling character, both clever and sharp. Weir has created a realistic and fascinating future society on the moon, and every detail feels authentic and scientifically sound.

Weir knows how to make cutting-edge science sexy and relevant without losing the story.

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Original review on: http://www.firstpost.com

Book Review - The Humanitarian Impact of Drones

The Humanitarian Impact of Drones is, as Chris Heynes says in the preface, “a most welcome contribution to a vital debate,” chiefly because it extends beyond the legal lens used to consider the rights and wrongs of particular targeted killings, often the criticism which dominates the debate on the use of armed drones. 

Instead, split in to two parts, the report covers broader humanitarian ‘impacts’ and ‘perspectives.’ It includes its fair share of discussion on the impacts of targeted killings and the legal perspectives on these actions but chapters range from the impact on peace and security and the environment, to gender-based and religious perspectives. 

Throughout, the chapters are interspersed with case studies from countries or regions, relating to the various topics covered. The report moves between practical, theoretical and legal frameworks to offer a comprehensive understanding of the nature of drone warfare in its fullest sense.

In this review I want to highlight a few of the issues that are not normally covered. This is not to suggest that the chapters on international law, humanitarian law and the case studies on countries like Yemen, where targeted killing has become an integral part of the US war on terror, are not important. 

They are, and remain central to the debate on drone use – the chapters in this report make for sobering reading on the extent of targeted killing and associated civilian casualties. However, it is the issues that are not so commonly covered in armed drone research and lobbying that make this report so critical.

Leaving numbers of those killed illegally or wrongfully aside, the report seeks to address impacts on issues that are less quantifiable. In a short chapter, Elizabeth Minor (Article36) and Doug Weir (Toxic Remnants of War Project) asks what the unique impact of drone strikes might be on the environment, since drone strikes are often conducted in more densely populated areas and contain new metals and components that have not been tested to assess their toxicity levels. 

Moreover, drone strikes are more likely to be used to hit “environmentally risky” targets in densely populated areas, causing contamination and harm to the civilian population. 

The environmental consequences of warfare of any sort are often ignored, or at least not measured, and this under-reported an unquantifiable harm has the potential to increase with the proliferation of armed drone use.

A problematic issue that is often dismissed by supporters of armed drones, but has been something that Drone Wars UK has consistently sought to address, is covered by Chris Cole in his chapter on ‘Harm to Global Peace and Security.’ 

The fallacy of the term ‘precision strike’, which has warped the public perception of the effectiveness of drone strikes, is unpacked, as it the increased potential for cross-border strikes. This is backed up by revealing statements from military personnel and lawyers in their support for drone warfare. We must take note of these issues and remain vigilant to the slide towards perpetual conflict.

Original Review on: dronewars.net

BOOK REVIEW - Annotated List of the Birds of Berkshire County, Massachusetts by David P. St. James

This fall, two unusual bird species were observed in the Berkshires: a dickcissel, normally found breeding in the grassy fields of the Midwest and wintering in South America; and a northern wheatear, a resident of the Canadian Arctic in summer but mostly found throughout Asia and Europe. 

Finding a species uncommon in an area is not only exciting–an addition to a life list or a locality list–but could be important in the study of local ecosystems, perhaps indicating changes in the environment

Ornithology began with meticulous record-keeping, and the body of knowledge is forever expanding with the constant accumulation of data. 

Most ornithologists, amateur or professional, have their own methods of obtaining and verifying sightings–whether plant, insect, mammal or bird–using the centuries of ornithological literature, which has expanded so much, I personally have bird books residing (and possibly breeding) in piles in front of bookcases. At least the piles are organized.

But it takes a dedicated scientist to gather information from many sources, both historic and present day, and organize the data so they are available to all. One of our well-known local naturalists, David St. James–a gentle, brilliant soul–was such a man. 

He may have worked as a biologist for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife but, throughout his life, he noted everything he saw, whether it related to work or to the natural history of the Berkshires.

Often. St. James–sometimes as scruffy as an old woodsman in layers of sweaters, well-worn sneakers or rubber boots and a billed cap–could be found wandering the woods listening for warblers or scanning Richmond Pond for winter ducks or hiking along a mountain trail in search of a hawk or owl nest. 

In the evenings, he recorded all he had seen, noting everything about each sighting.

St. James amassed a wealth of information not only on his own, but also gathered pertinent data from reference books, from Christmas counts and from other local birders and began working on an annotated list of Berkshire birds, an important addition to the existing literature.

You may go to other books of birds of the area and find out when a species was initially observed and how common it was, but the information will be only as updated as the publication date–for example, Hoffmann’s guide, 1904.  

Periodically, different works update this info in their texts and, flipping from book to book, you may follow the sequence of a species’ sightings and frequency of occurrences.

Original review on: heberkshireedge.com

Book Review - The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Like other works by Louise Erdrich, the story of The Round House is rooted in the lives of Native Americans. These are not people living in conical tents and wielding battle axes. 

They are a ‘regular’ community in which teenagers talk about Star Trek and people drive to work. The story begins with a drive that a thirteen-year-old named Joe takes with his father, as they go looking for his mother, who’s taking longer than usual to get back home.

This is, perhaps, the most fateful drive of their lives. As they head for a grocery store, where they think the boy’s mother might be, they see her driving past – in the opposite direction, meaning homewards – at a furious speed. 

Following her home, they discover a terrible event, one that’ll change their lives forever. The mother, Geraldine, has been brutally raped, with a degree of violence that has left her utterly traumatised.

From here on, Joe’s world becomes a pre-occupation with getting justice, trying to understand what happened to his mother, and coming to terms with his own adolescent desire for an attractive older woman.

This is also where the illusion of Native Americans being absorbed into mainstream modern American society develops many cracks. 

Getting justice for Geraldine is that much more complicated because she is Native American and the perpetrator may be non-Native; and the place of crime may be outside tribal jurisdiction. 

The story also places practical tribal wisdom against the lenient attitude of urban law towards a certain class of crimes. Among Geraldine’s own people, what her rapist would get is death, for such a crime can only have such a punishment. But the courts of American law might see things differently.

The crime at the core of the story leaves Joe and his parents lacerated. Connecting with them means feeling some of their pain. That’s why this book can’t be called a mere page-turner – it’s not casual reading; it leaves a deep impression.

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Original review on: http://www.hindustantimes.com

Book Review - The Impostor by Javier Cercas

Enric Marco was one of the most famous men in Spain. As President of the “Amical de Mauthausen”, an association of Spanish survivors of the Nazi camps, he spoke eloquently about the evils of Fascism. 

In a speech given to the Spanish Parliament in 2005 his account of his experiences in a concentration camp had the children of deportees in the gallery in tears. This wasn’t all. 

He had fought on the Republican side in the Civil War, been persecuted by the Franco regime and then, as Secretary-general of the CNT (the Anarchist trade union) been influential in the transition of Spain from dictatorship to democracy. Quite a life! What a hero!

But then came exposure; he was unmasked. He had never been in a concentration camp, though he had been in Germany during the war as a volunteer worker. His anti-Fascist credentials were soon questioned. 

If he had lied about the concentration camp, why should he be believed about anything? Yes, he had been a magnificent and compelling speaker about the horrors of Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, but he was still an impostor, mocked and reviled.

Anyone who has read Javier Cercas’ novels – especially Soldiers of Salamis and Outlaws – will recognise that Marco’s is a story made for him. These books explored the unreliability of memory and personal testimony and of what may have been generally accepted as historical truth. 

Nevertheless, he was reluctant to write about Marco, despite the urging of friends, among them the great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. He had met Marco and found him even in his nineties to be unstoppably loquacious and fertile in denial, self-justification, and self-pity.

Happily he went ahead. The book is written as a”novel without fiction,” with Cercas’ own feelings and reflections always to the fore. This was the method of his remarkable account of the failed military coup of 1981, Anatomy of a Moment. It worked then; it works now.

Cercas has immersed himself in the archives, talked with historians and journalists who have covered the Marco story, interviewed his acquaintances, friends, former admirers, and spent hours, days, weeks listening to the old man – well over 90 by now – and trying to make sense of his life. 

In some of his memories or claims, those relating to the Civil War, there would appear to have been an element of truth amidst exaggerations and even impossible assertions. There were puzzles not easy to resolve. 

Why for instance did he have a civil servant’s pension? Was this, as some said, because he had perhaps been a police informer in at least the early Franco years? Or was there some other not discreditable explanation?

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Original review on: http://www.scotsman.com

Book Review - How To Build A Car by Adrian Newey

Adrian Newey’s written a book – and it’s quite superb. Granted, you may need a certain all-encompassing fascination of every aspect of F1 including the nuts and bolts to be riveted by it all (which I was), but How To Build A Car is so much more than just what its title implies. It’s also the story, told with eye-opening candour, of his life and loves.

You will find in it some of his original freehand drawings of, for example, the hugely influential Leyton House 881 nose shape, together with an illuminating explanation of the car’s concept and the thoughts behind it. 

You’ll find every single one of his designs for March, Williams, McLaren and Red Bull explained and explored. But not in a dry textbook way; he explains this and everything else within the context of the circumstances of the team and his life at that time. 

He talks about his creative block when he was a designer at Beatrice, trying simultaneously to hold down that job, race engineer Patrick Tambay in F1 and Mario Andretti in IndyCar, keep together his marriage and be a recent first-time dad. 

Little wonder the finer details of an airbox configuration might have escaped his attention back then. He will move on from the difficulty of the relationship with a partner straight into the weakness of a gearbox casing almost in a stream of consciousness.

He’s part-nerd, part-rebellious teenager in a middle-aged man’s body, part-artist and part-creative genius engineer. Turns out he’s also part-writer. In this latter persona he opens out in a way that his somewhat shy, reticent front in the spotlight doesn’t allow. 

The Adrian in this book is the one his friends know – like he’s talking with a group of them over dinner and a few glasses of wine. He might recount you the tale of how he was expelled from school or how he popped a wheelie on a Suzuki in the Magny-Cours paddock and ended up in a heap in the Camel hospitality area. 

But there’s some heavy stuff in here too including, obviously, Senna’s death at Imola 1994 and he doesn’t shirk from deep self-analysis of that whole horrible episode and its aftermath.

You might be fascinated to know how he worked out that there was an aerodynamic dead zone aft of the front wing on one of his cars – discovered by physically walking up the wind tunnel when it was in operation, armed with a cloth and a stick. 

He’ll tell you what sort of pencil he uses for his drawings and you’ll believe him when he says: “I always try to draw with passion. In other words, I have to believe what I’m drawing will be the next step forward.”

He’s also terrific in giving insight into the drivers he’s worked with: from Mario Andretti to Sebastian Vettel, taking in Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Alain Prost and others along the way. And he’s fabulously indiscreet about those he feels has done him a disservice along the way, even those he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to. 

Want to know how he really feels about Ron Dennis? Or Patrick Head? And why? It’s all in here. Also, did you know that Mercedes offered him a job as recently as 2014?

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Original Review on: http://www.motorsportmagazine.com

Book Review - Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Winter is published in the UK on the same day in November as Ali Smith’s Winter. Both writers are now two books into their seasonal quartets, each of them having begun with Autumn.

Knausgaard got there first, kickstarting his cycle in his native Norway one year earlier in 2015; Smith had the last laugh by writing the better book and making the shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize.

Not that Knausgaard’s book would have qualified. His seasonal volumes are not novels but, according to the back cover, “memoir/essays”. However, the many pieces within are often too general to count as memoir and too short to be termed essays.

This isn’t the only instance of difficulty in pinning Knausgaard down. The jury is still out on whether his other series, the acclaimed My Struggle project, can tidily be categorised as “fiction”. 

Doesn’t an author’s relived and reimagined account of adolescence and adulthood merit the cross-breed classification of “fictionalised autobiography”?

How we pigeonhole Knausgaard’s Winter and how it measures up against Smith’s book of the same name is, in the end, immaterial.

What matters of course is its quality as a standalone book. But it’s worth noting that, unlike Smith with her seasonal sequence, Knausgaard has changed tack, branched out and attempted something artistically different.

His enterprise is bolder and as such, riskier. A bad season from Smith is a weak novel, nothing more. A bad season from Knausgaard is a weak link which jeopardises the entire project. So does Winter work? 

Answering that requires an evaluation not only of content but intent. Both Autumn and Winter are odes to Knausgaard’s unborn daughter. The books are divided into three months.

Each month contains 20 “essays” – or rather two – or three-page discussions of, or meditations on, a range of topics. Some unfold in a single, unbroken paragraph, others are more reader-friendly.

Knausgaard prefaces each monthly section with a letter to his child in which he comments on her development and his state of mind. Then the months begin and he proceeds to explore what the book jacket calls “the wonders of life”.

A quick scroll through the book’s contents renders the publisher’s blurb laughable, for while Knausgaard muses on bona fide wonders such as the moon, the brain, water and atoms, he also devotes his attention to some less miraculous subjects: manholes, Q-tips, toothbrushes and windows.

Also included are profiles and character sketches, concepts and perspectives (Hollow Spaces, Vanishing Point, The Social Realm) and extended thoughts on animals, body parts, feelings and habits.

Whatever the topic, whether concrete or abstract, ordinary or extraordinary, Knausgaard proves to be an expert examiner. With satisfying regularity he comes in at oblique angles and finds unexpected facets and original insight. Ingvild Burkey has skilfully translated. Lars Lerin’s illustrations capture the beauty and the bleakness of the season.

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Original review on: www.thenational.ae

Book Review - The Home That Was Our Country by Alia Malek

Syria is an ongoing tragedy and for many Syrians living abroad, their homeland is nothing but a memory. The country they knew no longer exists.

Alia Malek, an award-winning journalist and civil rights lawyer who was born in Baltimore to Syrian immigrant parents, has released a new book titled: “The Home That Was Our Country.”

In the book, Malek tells the story of Syria through her grandmother’s apartment building and the Damascene neighborhood that surrounds it.

Malek decided not to write about the bombing, the war zone and the political factions, but to focus on the lives of ordinary people. “It’s so utterly human and relatable and accessible. I think a lot of the humanity of Syria (is) lost when we only focus on what is happening at a military level or at a political level.

You know, Syrians themselves are entertaining, are intelligent. They’re the best people to tell their own story. That’s why, you know, I kind of invited the reader to come experience this as if they were a member of the building, or a member of the household or a member of the neighborhood.

That’s the only way that I was going to be able to break through the sort of stone-facedness with which I think a lot of us are looking at Syria these days,” Malek said in an interview with media personality Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

The story begins with her great-grandfather, who was born under Ottoman rule. Malek acknowledges that “Origins” was the most challenging chapter to write. She follows her family under the repressive regime of former Syrian leader Hafez Assad and his son Bashar.

“It was a fascinating activity. You have to wade through… what is legend and lore about a family and sort of start trying to piece together what is actually real,” Malek said.

Her research for the book began when Malek moved to Damascus in 2011. She had arrived in Syria to finish restoring her grandmother’s house at a time when the entire region was experiencing the winds of change and she wanted to write a book about her grandmother, Salma, which she had been planning to do for a long time.

During the two years she spent researching her family, she became increasingly worried about her safety and theirs.

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Original review on: http://www.arabnews.com

Book Review - THE DAWN WATCH Joseph Conrad in a Global World By Maya Jasanoff

I turned my back on reading Joseph Conrad in 1967. This was also the year that I published “A Grain of Wheat,” my third novel, which I wrote soon after reading Conrad’s “Under Western Eyes.” 

I could not put words to what repelled me, because, despite the unease, his influence on my work was unmistakable, and long lasting. 

“A Grain of Wheat” marked a dramatic shift for me away from the linear plots and single points of view of my first two novels to the multiple narrative voices and diverse temporal and geographic spaces of my later works. The difference in style was a result of my encounter with Conrad.

The majesty and musicality of his well-structured sentences had so thrilled me as a young writer that I could cure a bout of writer’s block simply by listening to the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or reading the opening pages of Conrad’s “Nostromo.” It instantly brought my mojo back.

I am not alone in being so impacted. In Gabriel García Márquez’s “Hundred Years of Solitude,” the sweep of history and dictatorships that litter the social landscape of the novel reminded me strongly of “Nostromo,” Conrad’s complex epic about an imaginary South American republic. 

García Márquez’s title even seems to nod at the fictional historical tome contained within Conrad’s novel: “Fifty Years of Misrule.”

In her fascinating book, “The Dawn Watch,” the Harvard professor Maya Jasanoff offers detailed background on the evolution of Conrad’s books, describing how each was a sort of reckoning with Western conquest and advancing globalization. 

We learn, for example, that “Nostromo” was written as Conrad delved into the oral and written sources about the “liberation” of Latin America that often ended in Western-backed dictatorship. 

As he was writing, he was taking in news of the crisis over the Panama Canal, an episode of political and military manipulation in which America emerged as a new, wily imperial power. 

In other words, Conrad and García Márquez were drawing from the same well of post-colonial Latin American history.

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Original review on: www.nytimes.com