In the past month, I’ve found myself reminiscing about those days when the act of writing didn’t involve any other pressures (than the one applied to my finger). I’d say: when the act of writing was as simple and organic as riding a bike, but well, I never learnt how to ride a bike. Continue reading On Perfectionism and Creativity: Does Academic Writing Kill Creativity?
As a war narrative enveloped in magic, love, and hope, The Baghdad Clock adds depth to the burgeoning genre of postcolonial Iraqi novels. Continue reading The Real and the Imaginary: The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi
“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing “we” can do—but who is that “we”?—and nothing “they” can do either—and who are “they”?—then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.” Continue reading Susan Sontag on Compassion
Without a doubt, 2020 has been a testing time for all of us across the globe. Fortunately for us book lovers, the new decade has been packed with compelling debuts and stunning new titles. From The Magical Language of Others: … Continue reading Most Anticipated Books of 2020 (May-September)
“Siddhartha said: ‘What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.'” Continue reading Hermann Hesse on Seeking & Finding
“So instead of giving way to despair, I took the way of active melancholy as long as I had strength for activity, or in other words, I preferred the melancholy that hopes and aspires and searches to the one that despairs, mournful and stagnant.” Continue reading Van Gogh on Hope & Melancholy
This may all seem too idealistic to some but nonetheless conveys a crucial message about the role of the artist and what cultural and literary representations can offer in the ongoing debates about the so-called “problem” of Muslims in the Anglophone North Atlantic. Continue reading The Year of the Middle Eastern Reading Challenge + Unapologetically Muslim Reading Challenge? Yes, please.
“Happiness,” Woolf writes, “is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.” Continue reading George Eliot & Virginia Woolf on Happiness
meditations on home, belonging & all things literary 
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