For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Very early in my spiritual education, I was taught by my elders to be cautious about making claims. One reason for this caution—particularly when it comes to making claims about oneself—is that claims are often rooted in the ego. They betray the fact that so much of what we claim about ourselves can be … Read more
[ad_1] The thing about longing is that it could take any form, really. Though vastly different on the surface, everything from going on walks or reading poems, to forged marriages for the sake of securing permanent legal residence, skipping meals, or crossing borders can be powered by an ineffable call towards something, someone, that emanates … Read more
[ad_1] This past July, the German literary organization Litprof announced that Palestinian writer Adania Shibli won the 2023 LiBeraturpreis award for her novel Minor Detail and would receive the award at a ceremony on October 13, 2023 at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair. As is well known by now, the Frankfurt Book Fair decided to … Read more
[ad_1] I am not so audacious as to claim there’s a single quality that weaves together all of us who love literature—readers, writers, booksellers, publishers, librarians, to name just a few. But whatever list of qualities we may come up with to describe everyone under the umbrella of books, high on that list would be … Read more
[ad_1] By most accounts, one is considered a wild success if he grows up in poverty in a rural village in India and then overcomes the obstacles imposed by those circumstances to become become a surgeon in London, then a senior department leader in a hospital, and then retires in a riverside penthouse—the type of … Read more
[ad_1] Any time I ask my mom about the Lahore of her childhood, the present moment glitches for a split second, and she disappears to some place within herself. Upon return, the edges of her lips curl into a sly smile, and—each time, without fail—she prefaces her answers with a single phrase: “Lahore Lahore hai” … Read more
[ad_1] Jamil Jan Kochai was sitting with his parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on the second story of his aunt’s home in Logar, Afghanistan, sipping tea and taking in the evening breeze around sunset, when his phone buzzed, and he saw that he was tagged in a tweet by the National Book Foundation. But before … Read more
[ad_1] The feeling of being haunted has a way of collapsing one’s sense of direction and space. The presence of something blankets the world like mist, lingering, but impossible to locate. The feeling is inevitably followed by the question, “is it all in my head?” Maybe I’m projecting the rumblings of my psyche out into … Read more