Throughout the narrator’s elaborate life; he experienced love, friendship, and sickness; as well as many other things described in his book: Love in Exile. This book discusses the different cultures and personalities that the narrator observes, the love of the narrator’s life, Brigitte, and the life of Bahaa Taher in general and the kinds of cultures he experiences.
The differences that the narrator observes are different from his life with his wife than from his life in Europe. Throughout his work in the Egyptian newspaper he was enjoying a good life with his family, receiving a fine salary while submitting regular articles to the Egyptian newspaper. His friend Ibrahim, with whom he had many strong conversations and arguments, is the one who visited him in Europe and with whom he spent a lot of time. Shadia, the most beautiful girl in the newspaper, was the one who got married to Ibrahim then divorced him years later. Shadia then carried on with her life, married the newspaper accountant and changed a lot when she became overweight and starting wearing clothes as fashionable as before.
The narrator’s life in Europe was very different in many ways. When he grew older and couldn’t meet his children more than once or twice a month, he went to Europe and starting working there as a journalist (Ṭāhir 10). He worked at a newspaper that provided him a low salary and would only publish 300 words a week of all what he wrote. Next he worked at another newspaper in Egypt, writing articles that reflect The British’s reactions towards the events happening In Egypt. After Ibrahim lived many years in Lebanon, he took a week of to observe London’s view of everything. When Ibrahim met the narrator as well as many other people at the Pedr...
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"Bahaa Taher." Arab World Books Your Cultural Club, Arabic Bookstore and Arab Authors' Home Promoting Cultural Dialogue. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .
"Bahaa Taher, Love in Exile." People Become Stories and Stories Become Understanding. Web. 28 Apr. 2011. .
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Ṭāhir, Bahāʼ. Love in Exile. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 2004. Print.
Taher, Bahaa. "Love in Exile, By Bahaa Taher, Trs Farouk Abdel Wahab - Reviews, Books - The Independent." The Independent | News | UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper. Web. 5 Apr. 2011. .
Galchen creates the character of her narrator to be very similar to that of the young narrator in “Araby” in a modern setting. In their youth, each narrator becomes infatuated and obsessed with someone who does not realize. The narrator of “Araby” falls in love with his friend Mangan’s sister, as seen in that he states that “when she came out on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (123). He forms an obsession with her, as evidenced by the fact that he “had never spoken to her . . . and yet her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” and in that “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance” (123).
Ibn Munqidh, Usama. "From Memoirs." McNeill, William and Marilyn Robinson Waldman. The Islamic World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973. 184-206.
Joyce, James. “Araby”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Eds. R.V. Cassill and Richard Bausch. Shorter Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. 427 - 431.
“Araby” tells the story of a young boy who romanticizes over his friend’s older sister. He spends a lot of time admiring the girl from a distance. When the girl finally talks to him, she reveals she cannot go to the bazaar taking place that weekend, he sees it as a chance to impress her. He tells her that he is going and will buy her something. The boy becomes overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform this chivalrous act for her, surely allowing him to win the affections of the girl. The night of the bazaar, he is forced to wait for his drunken uncle to return home to give him money to go. Unfortunately, this causes the boy to arrive at the bazaar as it is closing. Of the stalls that remained open, he visited one where the owner, and English woman, “seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty” (Joyce 89) and he knows he will not be able to buy anything for her. He decides to just go home, realizing he is “a creature driven and derided with vanity” (Joyce 90). He is angry with himself and embarrassed as he...
Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1991. Print.
Ahmedi, Farah, Mir Tamim. Ansary, and Farah Ahmedi. The Other Side of the Sky: A Memoir. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2005. Print.
The Arabian Nights.Trans. Husain Haddwy. Ed. Muhsin Mahdi. New york: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990. E Book.
No one knows what will happen in his or her life whether it is a trivial family dispute or a civil war. Ishmael Beah and Mariatu Kamara are both child victims of war with extremely different life stories. Both of them are authors who have written about their first-hand experience of the truth of the war in order to voice out to the world to be aware of what is happening. Beah wrote A Long Way Gone while Kamara wrote The Bite of the Mango. However, their autobiographies give different information to their readers because of different points of view. Since the overall story of Ishmael Beah includes many psychological and physical aspects of war, his book is more influential and informative to the world than Kamara’s book.
In “Araby”, James Joyce details the transition of a young Irish boy into his adolescence. Looking for love and excitement, the narrator becomes obsessed with pleasing his best friend’s sister, eventually ending up at a special festival to buy her a present. Disappointed by the bad- natured shopkeepers and its closing down, he reaches a frustrating epiphany about the fine line between reality and his wistful dreams. Through the use of fanciful imagery and detached characterization, Joyce demonstrates how romance belongs to the realm of the young, not the old, and that it is doomed to fail in a word flawed by materialism and a lack of beauty.
Hamid’s fiction deals with varied issues: from infidelity to drug trade in the subcontinent and, in the light of contemporary developments, about Islamic identity in a globalised world. His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000) won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2000. His other novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Decibel Award and the South Bank Award for Literature. This book serves as a testament to his elegant style as he deftly captures the straining relationship between America and Pakistan.
In “My Two Lives” Jhumpa Lahiri talks about her hardship growing up in America coming from two different cultures. At home she spoke Bengali with her parents, ate with her hands. According to Jhumpa’s parents she was not American and would never be. This led her to become ashamed of her background. She felt like she did not have to hide her culture anymore. When Jhumpa got married in Calcutta she invited her American friends that never visited India. Jhumpa thought her friends would judge from being part of the Indian culture and isolate her.However her friends were intrigued by her culture and fascinated. She felt like her culture should not be hidden from her friends anymore, and that coming from an Indian-American culture is unique. Jhumpa believes that her upbringing is the reason why she is still involved with her Bengali culture. Jhumpa says“While I am American by virtue of the fact that I was raised in this country, I am Indian thanks to the efforts of two individuals.” Jhumpa means that she is Indian, because she lived most of her life and was raised here. In the story Lahiri explains that her parents shaped her into the person she is. Growing up coming from two different cultures can be difficult, but it can also be beneficial.
In James Joyce’s “Araby” a young boy living in a dark and grave world develops an obsessive adoration with an older girl who lives in his neighborhood and his devotion towards her ultimately forces him to make a promise to her he is incapable of keeping, resulting in a life changing epiphany.
In this text Mohanty argues that contemporary western feminist writing on Third World women contributes to the reproduction of colonial discourses where women in the South are represented as an undifferentiated “other”. Mohanty examines how liberal and socialist feminist scholarship use analytics strategies that creates an essentialist construction of the category woman, universalist assumptions of sexist oppression and how this contributes to the perpetuation of colonialist relations between the north and south(Mohanty 1991:55). She criticises Western feminist discourse for constructing “the third world woman” as a homogeneous “powerless” and vulnerable group, while women in the North still represent the modern and liberated woman (Mohanty 1991:56).
His literary works achieve universal fame as he experiences different cultures by reflecting the idea that alienation is the universal predicament of the contemporary world. Naipaul’s basic concerned is with the displaced individual of postcolonial societies, but obviously it becomes one of the aspects of modern man too. It was Trinidad that made Naipaul sensitive diasporic writer with its diverse races, cultures and religions. All the heterogeneous people lived in this land, have sharing common characteristics of diaspora. They live in the dilemma of uncertain affiliation. Mel Gussow rightly observes: “Wherever he goes, it is a foreign country. For Naipaul home has lost its meaning… wherever he has gone, he has been an outsider (Gussow, 1976: