I married a song. I did this secretly for about five years.
When I heard it, the sun was setting, and I was in a heavenly expanse of an old house with milk-colored walls. I knew from the first beat that it was her, the song of my life. I only hesitated a little, and because I had never heard before about a legal ruling or a moral reason that prevents a woman from marrying a song, I made up my mind and married her.
Every night I put two headphones in my ears, and Yas Khader sings to me “Han wa Ana Ahn.” I adjust the tremors of my soul to the tremors of the sad Iraqi melody, and I drink Yas’s voice through all my pores. The song cauterizes my heart, and it melts, pouring tears, rain drops, and dew beads, and then it snows. Have mercy on me gently, and I will give birth to butterflies, starlings, and daffodils.
I smile before I sleep, and many women smile with me. I may not know them, but I know that they are like me. A song may revive them, or a song may kill them.
Eleven years have passed since Miguel, Alethea, and Lucas met together in one place, when they were teenage friends, and since then, as soon as a connection occurs between two of them, the ghost of the third is present, so that the roles and desires change and it is not really known which of the two young people he loved. Alethea and those who abandoned her are defeated by the other.
In this special novel, the novelist Mario Benedetti dives into the depths of the human soul, contemplating a complex love triangle between two young men and a girl, leaving space for each of them to tell the story from his point of view through diaries, letters, and the story, so that it appears as a different story every time, as if it were three rivers. A small one that eventually flows into the same lake.
Mario, the geometric painter, returns one day to his apartment in the city of Jaén, which he has shared for six years with his wife, Blanca. He finds that another woman, almost identical in features and gestures, has taken her place. He begins to turn over the memories and scrutinize the evidence, trying to discover the reasons for her absence, or to bring her back again. Somehow. Is Blanca really gone? What do you look for in the worlds you are immersed in and Mario is forbidden from entering?
In this intense and interesting novel, the Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina delves deeply into the relationship of a man and a woman whose destinies intersected before their world began to shake under the influence of differences and the monotony of life. Molina sheds light on the complexity of emotional relationships and the conflicts experienced by couples who love in their partners today what they may hate in them tomorrow...
Why poetry now?!
We live in an age of betrayals, conspiracies, and assassinations. We pant through twenty-four crowded, deadly hours in a frame of extended, neglected time that does not give any importance to our entire lives. We live in vortexes, labyrinths, and alienation. We live in oppression, fear, and hunger. So why poetry now?!
Who has time for poetry? Who has time to write poetry?! Who has time to receive poetry?!
Poetry riots against betrayal, conspiracy, and murder, or it riots against triviality, superficiality, and sorcery. If poetry does not say: “No” in a blatant, loud, and hurtful way, then it does not accept to say: “Yes,” even by cutting off its head.
It's that great positive thing. It is what confirms to us that we cry because we are not yet accustomed to humiliation and have not accepted it, that we bleed because we have not died, and that we are angry because we have not adapted to injustice. It alerts us to what we have almost forgotten, and reminds us that we are human, and that we are bigger and greater than our daily lives.
we are human beings. We must always remember this, and poetry must always remind us of this.
We are greater than profit and loss, greater than acceptance and surrender, or malice and evasion.
So poetry is necessary.
Therefore, a poet is necessary.
Khairy Al-Hallaq is a dangerous criminal sentenced to death. He spends the remainder of his life in prison waiting for the moment of execution of the sentence, and hides from everyone the secret that prompted him to commit his crime. A secret that might lighten his sentence, or save his life. When he enters the political prisoner ward, the criminal changes his convictions and reconsiders his life, thus dying a different person.
This “sermon” delves into the Turkish community of killers and criminals, to depict the prisoners’ diaries and their struggles in the cells, but it also carries a political and humanitarian dimension by criticizing the death penalty, and the societies’ attempt to purify themselves by choosing a scapegoat on whom to comment their crimes and corruption, and celebrate the joy of ending his life.
The sernama is usually a book that accurately describes a specific type of public celebration, but the sernama of Aziz Nessin conveys the facts and details of the execution of a “criminal” who lost his right to change.
Georg Hennick is a famous violin maker. When his life was coming to an end, he decided to resist oblivion and challenge life as a whole, in the name of art, by making an unconventional violin, unlike any musical instrument made before, to fill the universe with unrepeatable tones. As for Victor, the child who tells us this story, he met Grandpa Henik for the first time on his fifth birthday, when he got his first violin. He then met him many times later, and a great friendship developed between them.
In this novel, Victor Baskov writes, in a musical style, a warm story about art, the passage of time, the shadows of loved ones, and Bulgarian society and its diversity.
Was it still possible to add anything about Al-Mutanabbi, who filled the world and preoccupied the people, throughout these centuries that extended from his birth until now?!.. And did there remain a side of him that had not been studied, examined, and examined in more than one way, nor was it subject to discussion and debate among the fans of this great poet? And between his critics and haters?!..
Al-Mutanabbi is a unique figure in our literary heritage. His lovers, readers, and memorizers of his poetry are more numerous than those who can be counted, and it is too dangerous to clash with them without prior preparation and readiness. They have extensive knowledge of his poetry and many of the stages and details of his life. Their zeal in defending or attacking it is immeasurable. Therefore, the prior image is more binding. The imagined picture of him that they drew for him is too attached to the imagination to be discussed. Its relationship with national identity is more rooted and dangerous. This is what makes attacking him, for many, an attack on one of the nation’s “values and symbols.”
But I am writing about Al-Mutanabbi after I spent two full years reading him, analyzing his poetry, and studying the details of his life in order to write a television series about him. Dramatic writing requires its author to penetrate as much as he can into the souls of his heroes in order to understand them, to imagine them in the situations in which humans might be, and to draw their reactions, with dramatic logic, as human reactions might be. All of this is within the framework of documented historical information.
Aguilar realizes that something irreparable has happened to his wife as soon as he enters the hotel room where she is staying. He tries to discover the identity of the man who was with her, and to find out what specifically happened that put her in this strange state, but he discovers how little he knows about the deep turmoil hidden in the past of this woman, who found that her only weapon was to build her own world and withdraw behind the thick walls of madness.
Through a revolving narrative, Colombian writer Laura Restrepo enters the minds of four characters, trying to reveal their contradictions, their stormy lives, their turmoil, and their intimate details, charmingly intertwining violence, crime, love, and loyalty.
“Delirium,” which won the Alphaguara Prize in 2004, is a novel that, through the succession of voices it narrates, will immerse you in vortexes of delirium, too.
In everything Dostoyevsky wrote, he was writing about his spiritual research and exploration, and looking for solutions to the issues that worried him, but which would not be solved, as he himself clearly realized. And all of his heroes, including those who differ greatly from him in terms of his moral formation, struggle with the issues that Dostoyevsky himself wrestled with throughout his life. He is the spiritual father of all his main heroes, meaning that he represented a model for them. There is not a single person, among those whom he created and created, who did not copy him from himself, even if in a different way.
The life of a great personality becomes intelligible to us to the extent that we are able to delve into it, with one look, in the full diversity of its characteristics, which are often contradictory, but stemming from a single root. If we are not able to accomplish this, then in one way or another, in one way or another; We will simplify and impoverish this great personality.
If a biography of Dostoevsky's life was written without considering his novels, it would be worth nothing, and it would be impossible to restore the formation of his personality without his works. Dostoyevsky's realistic, experimental biography for understanding his novels is no less important than his novels themselves for understanding his personality. On the pages of Dostoevsky's novels, all of humanity's history, thought, and culture are revived, reflected in individual consciousness.
In order to understand the true importance of Dostoyevsky, which he has acquired in our time, a frank conversation is necessary.
