Reza Aslan: Tablet and Pen

(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/11/17/reza-aslans-new-book-table-and-pen-literature-bridges-civilizations.html)
no copyright infringement intended

This is an anthology of Arabic / Turkish / Iranian / Pakistani contemporary literature, edited by Reza Aslan. The authors selected here are grouped in three periods:

• 1910 - 1950, when the boundaries of modern Middle East have been carved, and the literature became a tool for shaping national identities
• 1950 - 1980, when modernity entered in conflicting ways in the Middle East society, with the literature reflecting all these evolutions and contradictions
• 1980 - 1910, when all these countries have been propelled onto global stage with all their old and new conflicts, and the literature across the whole region started to share the same preoccupations and obsessions

There are more than sixty authors in this collection: novelists and short-story writers, essayists and memoirists, poets - some of them have been translated into English for the first time here. Literature, considers Reza Aslan, humanizes the other, making them sympathetic as you come to know their all-too-recognizable lives.


(Reza Aslan)