Tag: Books and literature

Sabry Hafez: the Novel, Politics and Islam – Haydar Haydar’s Banquet for Seaweed

First posted June 07, 2016 The astonishing story of the uproar in Egypt over the publication of a Syrian novel set in Algeria—a work of literature as trigger for political crisis and polemical turmoil, two decades after it was written, in a landscape completely transformed. Haydar Haydar’s fiction as tuning-fork of stark dissonances of time… Read More Sabry Hafez: the Novel, Politics and Islam – Haydar Haydar’s Banquet for Seaweed

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Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ gift to Darwin

Jack Guy, CNN Karl Marx once gifted a signed copy of “Das Kapital” to scientist Charles Darwin, but the book remained largely unread, providing an “amusing insight” into the dynamics between these two intellectuals, according to experts. In “Das Kapital,” economist and philosopher Marx explored how the capitalist system works and, he argued, its tendencies toward… Read More Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ gift to Darwin

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Like a Top Hat

Alasdair MacIntyre: An Intellectual Biography by Émile Perreau-Saussine Reviewed by Jonathan Rée Marx’s optimism proved to be ill-founded. The proletariat did not live up to expectations, leaving latter-day Marxists scrambling to find alternative superheroes. Hence, according to MacIntyre, the multitudes of ‘conflicting … political allegiances which now carry Marxist banners’, all expressing a well-founded hatred of capitalism but none offering… Read More Like a Top Hat

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Watch Brian Cox read ‘If I Must Die’ by murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer

GAZA casualties live statistics On December 7, the beloved Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. In the week of mourning since, tributes to Alareer’s life, writing, mentorship, and activism have flooded in from around the… Read More Watch Brian Cox read ‘If I Must Die’ by murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer

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Christianity, Violence, and the West

Philippe Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror: Christianity, Violence, and the West; 2015 Reviewed by Warren Brown “The medievalist Philippe Buc discerns Christian tropes of holy war and martyrdom in seemingly secular movements with terroristic potential. A brilliant and disturbing interpretation of the religious origins of redemptive violence in the West, this is a book… Read More Christianity, Violence, and the West

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Anna Akhmatova: Three poems including ‘Requiem’ / Friendship in the time of terror: Nadezhda Mandelstam’s tribute to Akhmatova

First posted December 04, 2011 Reading HamletTo the right, wasteland by the cemeterybeyond it the river’s dull blue.You said: ‘Go, get thee, to a nunneryor get a fool to marry you…’ Though that’s always how Princes speak,still, I’ve remembered the words.As an ermine mantle let them stream,behind him, through endless years. ‘Hands clasped under the… Read More Anna Akhmatova: Three poems including ‘Requiem’ / Friendship in the time of terror: Nadezhda Mandelstam’s tribute to Akhmatova

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