Click here for Mohsin Hamid’s story “The (Former) General In His Labyrinth.”
When Mohsin was here at Vassar the other day, he was telling my students that what his novel meant–what could be concluded as happening in its final pages, for instance–would very much depend on what the reader brought to the scene. Your assumptions, your biases, your suspicions shaped the meaning of whatever was on the page.
And now comes this story whose telling also depends on the interactive reader. One of its characters says “But there are always at least two ways to tell a story.” Well, on reading “The (Former) General In His Labyrinth” you’ll find that there are many more ways of reaching the end. But is there only one end? Who knows what happened to General Zia? What is going to be the destiny of (Former) General Musharraf? And what is the fate that, thanks to you, dear reader, will befall Shaan Azaad/Sheherazade? ...
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Andrew O’ HaganFrom: amitavakumar.blogsome.com
Post Date: 2008-03-17 13:28:58
Down at the boathouse it was dark and the town’s lights were reflected in the black ripples of the river. Al Zimmerman, another of John’s teachers, showed me the boat that was named after John and the memorial plaque. Mr Zimmerman used to teach Latin and Greek at the school and he wrote the words for the plaque; he skirted around them when I was there, as if shy of what he had produced. The boathouse was full of expired energy and prolonged ideals. Al talked of what they tried to give John ...
more Spitzer and Big BFrom: amitavakumar.blogsome.com
Post Date: 2008-03-17 13:01:12
According to this cool site , Eliot Spitzer’s real crime was selling-out to Bollywood.
(Hat-tip, my friend at Nation Books , Carl Bromley)
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more The George W. Bush LibraryFrom: amitavakumar.blogsome.com
Post Date: 2008-03-17 02:07:16
For millennia, great and not-so-great leaders have celebrated themselves in monuments. The ziggurats of Mesopotamia, the pyramids, the Forbidden City, the Louvre, and Monticello all convey their builders’ legacies, as did the many lavish palaces of Saddam Hussein.
Modern U.S. presidents have only their presidential libraries. Now that the George W. Bush era is almost over, the world needs a place to archive the legacy of the 43rd president.
The above is from the Chronicle . We are...
more The Dark SideFrom: amitavakumar.blogsome.com
Post Date: 2008-03-16 02:38:50
Taxi to the Dark Side is showing at Upstate Films in nearby Rhinebeck. Alex Gibney , the director of this Academy Award winner for best documentary feature, will be at the Upstate tomorrow, March 16, at 1.00 PM.
The film offers an important and often painful-to-watch report about the torture and death of an innocent taxi-driver named Dilawar at the hands of American soldiers at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. A part of the film’s argument is also about the global migrat...
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