CFI: Abu Dhabi Reads
CALL FOR IDEAS — Updated 27 April
Electra Street invites you to suggest titles for the first annual “Abu Dhabi Reads” project. Based on the popular “One Book” programs that are sponsored by libraries across the United States, “Abu Dhabi Reads” is designed to bring people together around a shared reading experience for no other than reason to promote discussion and to exchange ideas. “Abu Dhabi Reads” is for everyone — not only NYUAD faculty, staff, and students, but also the larger Abu Dhabi community.
We invite your suggestions for a “good read.” From those suggestions, we will choose three finalists and the conduct an online poll that will enable interested readers to determine our first selection. Next fall, Electra Street will sponsor a series of discussions and talks about the book you’ve chosen.
We’re particularly interested in texts that are available both in English and in Arabic. To make a suggestion, please leave a comment on this post. If you prefer, you may send your suggestion via e-mail to electra.nyuad@gmail.com with the subject line “Abu Dhabi Reads.”
To make a suggestion, please leave a comment on this post. If you prefer, you may send your suggestion via e-mail to electra.nyuad@gmail.com with the subject line “Abu Dhabi Reads.”
Here’s a list of titles suggested so far:
Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven [Info]
Turki al-Hamad, Adama trilogy [Info]
Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451 [Info]
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities [Info]
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks [Info]
George Orwell, 1984 [Info]
Keija Parssinen, The Ruins of Us [Review]
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael [Info]
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind [Original title: La Sombra del Viento] [Review]
Keep those suggestions coming!
Turki al-Hamad, Trilogy: Adama – Shumaisi – Karadib (English translation Saqi Books 2003-2004)
تركي الحمد، ثلاثية “أطياف الأزقة المهجورة”: العدامة – الشميسي – الكراديب، دار الساقي
See this review in English: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901050117-1015836,00.html
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
A major influence on civil rights, anticolonial, and black consciousness movements internationally, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.
http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=Black+Skin,+White+Masks
فرانز فانون , جلد أسود، قناع أبيض
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, 1972.
(Originally Le città invisibili in Italian)
See review in English at:
http://www.criticalresearchlab.org/2010/01/invisible-cities-italo-calvino
/
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Original title: La Sombra del Viento, 2001 (translated 2004).
For a review go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/books/in-the-cemetery-of-forgotten-books.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
زمن الخيول البيضاء – إبراهيم نصرالله
Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasralla
رأيت رام الله – مريد البرغوثي
I saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti
عزازيل – يوسف زيدان
Azazeel by Yousef Ziedan
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn (1992)
Not a review, but for some information:
http://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-An-Adventure-Mind-Spirit/dp/0553375407
Suggested via e-mail:
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. The book is about the life and death of Eddie, who was a maintenance man. After dying while trying to save a little girl, Eddie finds himself in the afterlife where he meets five people who had an impact on his life.
Here’s a link to the book’s description at amazon.com: http://amzn.to/JxX08D
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
[...] takes a look at the second annual Emirates Korean Film Festival, and we’ve updated our “Call for Ideas” for this fall’s “Abu Dhabi Reads” [...]
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land
Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
some details about the book are available on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Expectations
Abdelrahman Munif, City of Salt (3 vol. translated into English by Peter Theroux and published by Vintage)
عبد الرحمن منيف، مدن الملح، ٥ مجلدات نشرت عند المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر ببيروت
(Aspiring translators: the third volume of Turki al-Hamad’s trilogy and the two last volumes of Munif’s Cities of Salt still need to be translated into English…)
I like the choices of ‘Farenheit 451′ or ’1984.’ Although the former might provide more accessible (and startling) parallels with censorship policies in the region, Orwell’s dystopian novel is almost univerally relevant– a book that should not only be read by everyone, but discussed by everyone.
Book Suggestion for Spring:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot