#Literature #Novels #Books

The Holy Quran in the Ginanic Literature (Audio Article) By Rashida Noormohammed-Hunzai.

THE TAGORE MEMORIAL MEETING

'Pakistan produces people of extraordinary bravery,' Nadeem Aslam has written, 'but no nation should ever require its citizens to be that brave.' His sentiment is shared by Kamila Shamsie, and the work of both novelists has focused on the human cost of conflict in their homeland. Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan, and experienced the devastation of General Zia's martial rule before his family fled to Huddersfield when he was 14. He has traced the plight of his compatriots from small-town Pakistan in 'Season of the Rainbirds' (1994), to the north of England in Maps for 'Lost Lovers' (2005), and back again in 'The Blind Man's Garden', published earlier this year. Kamila Shamsie grew up in Karachi, and many of her novels - 'In the City by the Sea', 'Salt and Saffron', 'Kartography' and 'Broken Verses' - have centred on struggles in her hometown. In a conversation chaired by essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra, Aslam and Shamsie discuss writing fiction, set in Pakistan and beyond, during the 'war on terror' years.

We are grateful to the Robert Gavron Charitable Trust for sponsoring this event.

The Pakistani novel today

Background, transcript, highlights, and discussion here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/02/10/the-project-of-literature-susan-sontag-92y/

Recorded live at the https://soundcloud.com/92y

Audio exclusively available courtesy of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center and the Susan Sontag estate. 

TRANSCRIPT / DETAILS

The Project of Literature: Susan Sontag at 92Y (April 16, 1992)

A presentation on November 16, 2006, by Michael D. Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor in World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, on research in New Zealand that was partially funded through a CSWR faculty grant.

Maori and Biotechnology: The Logic of Belief and the Logic of Practice

Ever since Sinbad the Sailor washed ashore there, Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – has drawn writers and storytellers from all over the world. But it is only in the last 20 years or so that Sri Lankan literature has come to international attention. Romesh Gunesekera grew up in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. His first book, Monkfish Moon, was a collection of short stories reflecting the ethnic and political tensions that have threatened Sri Lanka since independence in 1948. His second, 'Reef', was shortlisted for the Man Booker. Earlier this year, he published 'Noontide Toll', a novel set a post-war Sri Lanka still haunted by trauma. V. V. Ganeshananthan is a fiction writer, essayist and journalist whose 'Love Marriage' (2008), about two Tamil families in Sri Lanka and North America, was longlisted for the Orange Prize. In a conversation with BBC journalist Razia Iqbal they discuss the long shadow that war has cast over Sri Lankan literature, the challenges of writing fiction in the context of a troubled political climate, and the connection between writers living in Sri Lanka, and those of the diaspora working in Canada, America, Australia and the UK.

We are grateful to the Robert Gavron Charitable Foundation for sponsoring this event.


The Sri Lankan Novel

Should we rake through painful experiences, and try to learn from them, or are they best forgotten? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? And how much should we keep from the people we love? These are some of the questions posed by Andrew O'Hagan's fifth novel, The Illuminations, a story of love, memory and war. In collaboration with Faber Social, we present an evening of readings, music and performance. Andrew O'Hagan shares the stage with novelist, poet and playwright Edna O'Brien, whom Philip Roth has described as 'the most gifted woman now writing in English'; and performance poet Kate Tempest, winner of the Ted Hughes Award, and shortlisted for the 2014 Mercury Music Prize. With music from James Yorkston.

Contains strong language.

Reflections On War With Edna O'Brien, Andrew O'Hagan And Kate Tempest [Part 1]

Reflections On War [Part 2]

Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain’s searing memoir of the years 1900 to 1925, has become a classic of First World War literature. When Virginia Woolf first read it, shortly after its publication in 1933, she was so moved by Brittain’s account of her time as a VAD nurse, and of the loss of her fiancé and brother, that she stayed up all night to finish it. In a discussion interwoven with clips from the new film, Rosie Alison, its producer, Mark Bostridge who, as Vera Brittain’s biographer, advised on it, and Joanna Scanlan who plays Vera Brittain’s aunt, reflect on the challenges of adaptation, the genesis of a book first conceived as a novel, and the complicated relationship between autobiography and objective truth.

Filming 'Testament Of Youth'

When John Singer Sargent painted Robert Louis Stevenson in 1885, his unconventional composition made Stevenson think of 'a caged maniac'. Stevenson’s biographer Claire Harman talks about the circumstances under which the painting was made, the friendships it reflected and its capturing of a moment in Stevenson’s life just before his own notable composition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Claire Harman is a well-known critic and reviewer and the award-winning biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner, Fanny Burney and Robert Louis Stevenson.  Her book on Jane Austen, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World, appeared in 2009 and her new  biography of Charlotte Brontë will be published in 2015.

We are grateful to the National Portrait Gallery, our partner for this event.

Part of the programme of events complementing Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends.

A paradoxical portrait

Ali Smith’s novel How to be Both, in which the lives of a 15th-century fresco painter and a 21st-century Cambridge schoolgirl mysteriously intertwine, was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the Costa Novel Award, and won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize. ‘How to be Both brims with palpable joy,’ one reviewer wrote, ‘not only at language, literature and art’s transformative power, but at the messy business of being human.’ Marion Coutts’s fierce, shocking and beautiful memoir, The Iceberg, tracing the two years between her husband Tom Lubbock’s diagnosis with and death from a brain tumour, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Biography Award. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Diana Athill described it as a book that ‘ought to be read by anyone who ever pauses to consider our mortality.’ Meeting one another for the first time, Ali Smith and Marion Coutts talk about how to look at life slantwise, to weigh words, to come to terms with time, and to reconcile grief and grace.

An eye for life

Mark Doty, who was born in Maryville, Tennessee, and now lives in New York, was the first American poet to win the T.S. Eliot Award, and is a former winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. He first came to public attention with work exploring gay identity and the AIDS epidemic. Deep Lane, published this spring, is a book of descents – into the earth beneath the garden, and into the dark substrata of life. It ranges from agony to rapture, from great depths to hard-won heights. Ruth Padel, a former winner of the National Poetry Competition, was shortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Award for Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth, a book on conflict, harmony and creativity, weaving contemporary Middle Eastern politics and the history and culture of the Abrahamic religions, with music and craftsmanship. At its heart is a sequence on the Seven Last Words of Christ from the cross. Introduced by Fiona Sampson, Director, Roehampton Poetry Centre, our co-hosts for this event, Doty and Padel read from their work.

Mark Doty photo by Renato Pensold.

Tale of two cities

Seahorses are among the most popular species at London Zoo, and they provide a crucial barometer in measuring the health of the oceans. Yet comparatively little is known about them. Opening the third season of writers' talks at the zoo, Authors for Animals, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion considers a creature with a rich mythical existence, and a real life that is at once beautiful, intriguing and precarious. In an event introduced by the poet Jo Shapcott, herself a passionate conservationist, a ZSL keeper tells anecdotes about seahorses’ habits and husbandry, and a ZSL scientist talks about threats to the species and work being done to support seahorses in the wild. Andrew Motion then responds to the creatures imaginatively, reading from his poetry about this curious, beguiling species, and giving us his own take on its importance to humanity.

Andrew Motion 'Consider The Seahorse'

Kevin Folta addresses the elephant in the room: the recent flack about Monsanto funding a science communication outreach program, FOIA, and the future of the Talking Biotech science communication program.

Talking Biotech: Kevin Folta on biotechnology communication program, FOIA, and more

Originality in science is synonymous with being first; originality in the arts is somewhat different.  At what point do these two creative endeavours overlap?

Originality (Ian McEwan)

In response to escalating religious fundamentalism and division, Karen Armstrong argues that religion has more to do with behaviour than belief, and urges us to make compassion ‘a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarised world’.

What is Religion? (Karen Armstrong)

To read Neil's blog - "Ray Bradbury" - from 2012.06.06, visit http://bit.ly/ngjRAY1
To read his blog - "Ray Bradbury: In Memoriam and In Green Town Illinois" - posted in the evening of 2012.06.06, visit http://bit.ly/ngjRAY2

This recording was released via the Kickstarter/fan-funded live album "An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer" - additional info available at http://kck.st/pF2lMG
Recorded on 2011.11.08 in Portland, OR at the Aladdin Theater.

Written and Read by Neil Gaiman | @NeilHimself

Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Jaron Luksa | @JaronSound
Original artwork by Cynthia von Buhler | @CynthVonBuhler
Microphones furnished by Ear Trumpet Labs 

http://www.neilgaiman.com 
http://www.jaronsound.com 
http://www.cynthiavonbuhler.com 
http://www.eartrumpetlabs.com

The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury

A S Byatt talks to fellow novelist Philip Hensher about the experience of having her portrait created, and reflects on the tradition of painting not from life, but interior imagining.

Portraits of Writers Series - A.S. Byatt and Philip Hensher

David Harsent, who recently won the Griffin International Poetry Prize for his tenth collection, 'Night', discusses and reads from the work of Seamus Heaney, accompanied with recordings of the Nobel Laureate.

Portraits of Writers Series - David Harsent on Seamus Heaney

We look at medical treatments and devices that may change how diseases are diagnosed and treated.

#Literature #Novels #Books

Sliha Awan