I must have dreamt about this kind of a books blog for ages with the exception that I never really felt compelled to embark on such a venture, what with numerous time constraints. I was also hounded by a daunting feeling, that I still had to read several more novels and engage myself towards an easier familiarity with varied classical texts. Yet I longed to be able to manage such a feat, from where I would present a far more serious intent on my approach towards world literature & the cinematic arts.
No doubt, it is finally with readiness and excitement that I have opened this blog. Hopefully, posts will prove more challenging in structure and form, mainly in my approach towards certain regional novels and world cinema.
I take comfort that where my own artistic passions would will themselves to burst at the seams, that Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk has himself offered introspection in his illustrious selection of 2009 essays where he recently published The Naive and The Sentimental Novelist and where he suggested that although any reader could discern general thoughts and impressions or even basic emotional discourses as pertaining to a narrative or characterisation elements on a book they may have liked or scorned at, at some point; it was only the novelist who hankered after a ‘sentimental’ spirit, that would without hesitation, sum up the enthusiasm, to offer a detailed inventory of a novel.
I am that kind of writer.
I have a great interest at present in literature from Africa, or one that may be termed Asiatic and also the Far East (British Malaya/Malay Archipelago/Contemporary Malaysian Literature) and the Inuit (Eskimo) culture. However, I hold a penchant that may be deemed unfairly maternal in its love, devotion and protectiveness. This leaning towards Arabic, Turkish and Persian tales and also, those from North Africa and the Greater Middle-East, laid out with relish, for the reader of the English Language. I have been reading these regions intensely from the early part of 2008. Still, there is always a lingering interest from childhood, towards British fiction and the classics, all to which I loyally return.
I am not any kind of expert…only an avid reader humbled by the romanticism of the universe.
Susan Abraham –
August 1st, 2011.