Video: Ahdaf Soueif Discusses Arab Literature at the Jaipur Literature Festival
Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian activist and author of Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, took part in a panel discussion on “Maps of Love and Hate: Nationalism and Arab Literature” at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January. Soueif also recently attended the Kolkata Literary Meet and was interviewed by The Telegraph while in India.
Chaired by Jonathan Shainin, the panel included Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun, Iranian-American author Reza Aslan and British-Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh. Mahim Pratap Singh from The Hindu wrote about the event and reported on Soueif’s discussion of whether or not Arab literature should be labelled as a category of its own.
Watch a video of the session:
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“What bothers censorship is the representation of reality, and not reality itself,” Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun, who writes in French, said at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Monday.
“Sometimes, I am frightened at fiction as it seems more dangerous than reality. In the case of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was not reproached for writing about Islam; he was reproached because being a Muslim, he was not supposed to have had such views about Islam. Similarly, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose shows the enemy of religion is laughing,” Mr. Jelloun said at a session called ‘Maps of Love and Hate: Nationalism and Arab Literature.’
Book details
- Cairo: My City, Our Revolution by Ahdaf Soueif
EAN: 9781408826072
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- The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
EAN: 9780747545637
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- I Think of You by Ahdaf Soueif
EAN: 9780747588191
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- Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground by Ahdaf Soueif
EAN: 9780747577256
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Apr
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