Every year I try to convince my sister not to celebrate Christmas. I tell her we’re not Christians. She says I’m wrapping the children’s presents wrong. I tell her the kids will tear the paper anyway. She tells me to please be quiet and keep working. …more

A while back, a reader sent a lovely letter to my publisher. He enjoyed my novel, The Hakawati, tremendously, he wrote; however, he wanted to make sure that the writer, I in this case, knew that a story, one of the hundreds of stories in the book, was similar to one told in an episode of the old television series, The Twilight Zone. …more

I’m a congenital traveler, had been long before I wrote my first book. I took my first plane ride when I was two weeks old (taught me to travel light) and haven’t slowed since. Other than the frequency of travel (you want me to come to China and you’ll pay for it? Granada and Madrid, really?) what has changed since I’ve officially become a writer is that I’m now given social license to do what I’ve always done. I’m no longer stupid and slightly insane; I’m eccentric and dedicated to collecting stories, compulsive even. …more

The book I’m reading now, Microcosms by Claudio Magris. I’m traveling in China while falling in love with a book about the tiny and strange borderlands between Croatia (Istria) and Italy. Microcosms may not be as good as Danube, Magris’ masterpiece, but it might be more charming, and more moving.  Danube deals with Mitteleuropa as he calls it, the entire area that the sinewy river covers, whereas Microcosms deals with the writer’s homeland, its territories, histories, literature, its people, and the stories that formed him.  Magris has the ability make the  bit part players of these forgotten lands sparkle off the page; he’s able to breathe life into Jason and Medea, as well as an Istrian fisherman who was able to evade conscription from Mussolini’s fascists and Tito’s communists.

by RABIH ALAMEDDINE

When I was about to publish my first novel, a writer tried to prepare me for what was to come. It doesn’t matter what novel you write, she said, you will be asked how true it is. …more