RANDA JARRAR

Wishing y’all a great holiday and debauched new year.  I’ll be traveling until January 5th, so this space will be on hiatus.  Check back in for some new year cheer.  My astrologer says this will be a good one.  Go here to see what the stars have in store for you, if you like that sort of thing…

My novel gets reviewed with Kim Barnes’s A Country Called Home and Marilynne Robinson’s Home.  A snippet:

Jarrar has endowed her narrator with an ear attuned to every note of family farce… Nidali’s odyssey is as serious as it is comic and deeply moving. During the Bing Crosby-era, this tale of growing up absurd would have been compared to “Catcher in the Rye,” and deservedly so. It’s as achingly coming-of-age as it gets, as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking — like growing up.

You can read the rest here.

In fabulous winter news, A Map of Home is one of fourteen books of fiction deemed best of 2008 by contributing editors at Barnes & Noble Review.  You can take a look at the picks here.

I find this Galleycat warning amusing:

The worst case scenario for writers? “You make decisions about your career based on what you love to do,” the author explained, “but when it gets to the point that you can’t make a living writing… Maybe writing books will become just the hobby* of rich people, or people who can live very cheaply.”

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm, most writers don’t make money from their writing.  And in other countries, such as Egypt, writers pay their publisher a contribution.  Most writers throughout history have been rich or able to live cheaply.  That part of the equation will probably never change.  If you’re in the business of writing or creating art to make a living, you’re a crackhead/manic-depressive with delusions of grandeur.  One writes because one loves it and can’t bear to live without it.  At least, that’s how it ought to be.

*A hobby?  Oh, please.

In between enjoying beautiful thanksgiving and leftover meals, freaking out about Mumbai, and watching season one of the Wire, I spent the long weekend primping my Winter college class, titled Arab American Women’s Fiction.  The syllabus has been a joy to put together; it includes writing by Alia Yunis, Mohja Kahf, Diana Abu-Jaber, and many others, including authors that lend an interesting comparative perspective (writers like Jane Bowles, who lived in Morocco, and Marguerite Duras, and Mary Gaitskill, all of whom know how to write about damaged women exquisitely).  I’m really excited about this opportunity…

In book news, A Map of Home is reviewed in Bust Magazine this month; another lovely review.  A snippet:

Nidali’s voice is a winning combination of the detailed observations of a wannabe writer and the snark of an acerbic adolescent, and with her as a tour guide, readers won’t need a map through this spectacular fresh and funny debut novel.

My last stop of the tour for the year is at Seattle’s Elliott Bay on the 13th.  Please come by!