Mafia book author in ‘great danger’ from mob: Rushdie

Oktober 25, 2008 at 2:32 pm (Membaca, Novel, Salman Rushdie) ()

Sumber: Yahoo! News via Yahoo! Alerts Thu Oct 16, 1:17 pm ET

PARIS, Oct 16, 2008 (AFP) – British writer Salman Rushdie, who lived in hiding for years after an Islamic death threat, said Thursday that the Italian author of a book on organised crime is in far greater danger than he himself ever was.

“I met Roberto Saviano in New York in April. He’s an extremely pleasant, very intelligent man, but he’s in great danger,” he told France Info radio.

Saviano, the author of “Gomorrah,” said Wednesday he plans to flee his native Italy after learning that the Naples-area organised crime gang, the Camorra, wants him dead by the end of the year.

Rushdie said that “in April in New York, the FBI believed he was already in danger, because there is the mafia in the United States too.”

“Things are worse” for Saviano than for him, Rushdie said. “The mafia poses a much bigger problem than the one I had to face.”

Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses,” published 20 years ago, earned him an Islamic death threat and forced him to live in hiding under police protection for nearly a decade.

Some 1.2 million copies of Saviano’s book have sold in Italy.

Filmmaker Matteo Garrone’s screen version of the book won a major prize at the Cannes film festival in May and is in the running for an Oscar.

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Book ban ends rare Arab-Israeli cultural exchange

Oktober 4, 2008 at 5:57 am (Buku Islam, Membaca, Muslim, Sejarah) ()

Sumber : Yahoo! News via Yahoo! Alerts, By Joseph Nasr Tue Sep 30, 10:41 PM ET

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) – For 15 years Israeli Saleh Abbasi has traded books between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors, fostering a rare cultural link.

But in August Israeli authorities suddenly refused to renew his trading license because he was trading with “enemy” states Lebanon and Syria, frustrating both Abbasi’s business and the Arab and Israeli readers he has helped interest in each other’s literary traditions.

“How can the People of the Book be against books?” Abbasi asked, evoking the Jewish Bible as the first monotheistic holy text. “Books are a bridge to peace between cultures.” Baca entri selengkapnya »

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Walking on eggshells

Oktober 4, 2008 at 4:57 am (Membaca, Novel, Salman Rushdie) ()

Sumber : Guardian.co.uk via Yahoo! Alert, By Kenan Malik, guardian.co.uk, Articles History

Inayat Bunglawala is wrong; a culture of self-censorship is the real legacy of the reaction to The Satanic Verses By Kenan Malik

Inayat Bunglawala thinks I talk “pure twaddle”. Why? Because I suggested in an article about the firebombers who last week attacked the offices of the publishers Gibson Square that part of the problem is that too many liberals have come to accept that it is “morally unacceptable to give offence”.

Not so, said Inayat. “If anyone has given ground in this debate,” he suggested, “it is surely those who once believed in banning books because they regarded them as being ‘offensive’.”

Inayat himself has certainly given ground. Once a campaigner against The Satanic Verses, he now believes that no one has the right not to be offended. Inayat’s welcome change of heart should not, however, blind him (or us) to the fact that much of the rest of the world has been marching in the opposite direction. Baca entri selengkapnya »

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Attack targeted book on Islam

Oktober 4, 2008 at 4:05 am (Buku Islam, Membaca, Muhammad, Novel) ()

Sumber : Stuff via Yahoo! Alert Sunday, 28 September 2008

Terrorism arrests in North London have been linked to plans to publish in New Zealand and Britain a controversial book on the prophet Muhammad and his child bride.

The arrests are connected to a fire at a property in Islington, north London, which is used as the home and office of Martin Rynja, a publisher whose company, Gibson Square, plans to publish in New Zealand the book The Jewel of Medina, The Telegraph reported.

The blaze may have been started by a petrol bomb pushed through the letterbox.

Initially, three men, aged 22, 30 and 40, were detained at around 2.25am. Two were stopped by armed officers in Lonsdale Square, and the third was seized when a car was stopped by armed police near Angel underground station. The men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

A major publishing group, Random House US, announced in May this year that it was dropping its plans to publish the debut novel by American journalist Sherry Jones, of Spokane, Washington, following warnings that it could incite acts of violence from radical Muslims. Baca entri selengkapnya »

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The Heretic’s Daughter

Oktober 4, 2008 at 3:34 am (Book Reviews, Kathleen Kent, Membaca, Novel) ()

A debut novel about the Salem witch trials draws on the author’s own ancestry.

Sumber : The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! Alerts, By Yvonne Zipp | October 2, 2008 edition

If you live in Salem, Mass., chances are good your ears are burning right now. Not since the heyday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (or possibly Stephen King) has the town attracted so much fictional attention.

First up was this summer’s bestselling debut “The Lace Reader,” which set a witch hunt in modern Salem. This fall features two debut novels set during the hysteria of 1692, when men and women were hanged on the say-so of little girls.

One of these, The Heretic’s Daughter, by Kathleen Kent, goes inside the home of one of the accused. Martha Carrier, if preacher Cotton Mather is to be believed, was the “Queen of Hell.” To her 9-year-old daughter, Sarah, she was a tough-minded farmer’s wife who didn’t suffer fools at all. And being an outspoken woman in 1690s Massachusetts could get you killed.

“Where there are women, there are witches,” her cousin Margaret tells Sarah. (A feminist slant is almost de rigueur for those wanting to write about the Salem witch trials.) Baca entri selengkapnya »

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Why reading is not fundamental

Oktober 4, 2008 at 3:15 am (Membaca, Pierre Bayard, Uncategorized) ()

A professor of literature extols the virtues of nonreading

Sumber : The Christian Monitor, By Marjorie Kehe | January 28, 2008 edition

Bloomsbury 185 pp. $19.95

I must admit that I hadn’t read more than a few sentences of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read before I found myself thinking, “There’s no way he really believes this.” After all, how likely is it that a French intellectual (psychoanalyst and professor of French literature at the Sorbonne) is going to publicly suggest that too much reading may not be good for you? And that there is a certain virtue to nonreading? And yet that’s exactly the way that Bayard begins his trim little treatise (which is, by the way, laced with references to literature).

And so I certainly felt wary as I inched into the preface. “We still live in a society, on the decline though it may be,” notes Bayard, “where reading remains the object of a kind of worship.” It is to break through this mind set, Bayard explains, that “throughout this book, I will insist on the risks of reading – so frequently underestimated – for anyone who intends to talk about books, and even more so for those who plan to review them.”

Okay, so he’s being clever, I figured. He’s French after all, and probably very comfortable with irony. And he has certainly read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in which the wily Mark Anthony announces, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” and then does quite the opposite.

But no, long before I reached the epilogue I realized that Bayard is quite serious. (And if he’s ever read “Julius Caesar” he’s certainly not going to brag about it.) Baca entri selengkapnya »

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Ayo Nikmati Efek Dahsyat Membaca!!!

September 20, 2008 at 1:54 am (Buku Islam, Membaca, Uncategorized)

Oleh AGGA VAN DANOE

“Melalui Kota kelahirannya, Magelang, Hernowo mengibarkan bendera perang agar masyarakat Indonesia berbudaya membaca, tak hanya berbudaya menonton. Buku ini mengandung bulir-bulir intelektualitas dan kemuliaan tentang hakikat membaca.” (Andrea Hirata, penulis Laskar Pelangi)

Setelah melakukan shalat dhuhur ke 9 di bulan Ramadhan 1429 H, Hernowo didapuk untuk menyampaikan materi ter”anyar”nya yaitu “Menulislah Agar Dirimu Mulia: Pesan dari Langit”. Buku ke 33 yang ditulisnya ini merupakan serangkaian buku tentang menulis lainnya yang sudah dituliskannya dalam usianya yang sudah memasuki kepala 4 ini. Baca entri selengkapnya »

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