Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the page.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't know Arabic. I can't speak or write it.
One of the joys of a really good book is that you're so into the world of the book, you forget what you're looking at is words on a page.
Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors.
Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.
I've got Arabic music in my blood.
I had this desire to understand Islam better and then focus on the beauty of Arabic and Islamic cultures. And one of the first things to emerge was Arabic calligraphy, which was instantly inspiring.
But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.
Books are humanity in print.
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.
The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation.