Algerian Fiction by Assia Djebar! and Anita Brookner Month--Join Up!

Thanks to the wealth of my libraries, I have both novels now at my side. I'm sure I can finish them in July.

I'm so excited to learn more about Assia Djebar and the importance of Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War, which I'm reading for Caroline's (Beauty is a Sleeping Cat) July Literature and War Readalong, due on the 28th, I believe. My edition is a beautiful paperback from the library, if such things can be imagined. It's published by The Feminist Press in New York and is translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Clarisse Zimra, who teaches at Southern Illinois University, is the North African literary scholar who wrote the "Afterword."  I am so psyched to read a novel of the Algerian War written by a woman, and one that has been declared a feminist text and is taught in so many U.S. Comparative Literature classes. Can't wait to get to it. If you are at all tempted, please do join the readalong this month!

Thanks to JoAnn at Lakeside Musing, I've learned that July is Anita Brookner month, hosted by Heavenali  I don't know why I've never read a novel by Brookner. But that is due to change. I'm reading Hotel du Lac and today I actually dived in head first to Chapter 7, to be exact. I had no problem understanding what was going on, as this chapter delineates a major conflict for Edith as played out with the insufferable Mr. Neville. I was pulled in by the dialogue, the conflict, the philosophical rendering, and was reminded that it all was oddly reminiscent of the major conflict for Nora Eldridge in Messud's A Woman Upstairs! Can you imagine? I'm fascinated, though I'm wondering if I've gone crazy.