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December 02, 2017

From The TLS (Diana Darke on Books of the Year 2017):
Women Who Blow on Knots by Ece Temelkuran (Parthian; translated from the Turkish by Alexander Dawe) is a colossal sweep of a book, bursting with suspense, humour and sharp observations on societal tensions between men and women, Arabs and Turks. Ideal material for a highly colourful film, it documents a fast-moving road trip that begins in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, crosses Libya and Egypt, then reaches its climax in Lebanon. Three young women are thrown together by chance – a Tunisian dancer, an Egyptian academic and Ece herself, a Turkish journalist/author – and are persuaded by the elderly and enigmatic Madam Lilla to join her on her mission to kill a man. They are the “Women Who Blow on Knots”, a Qur’anic reference warning men to beware of them as witches, for the story is a spirited defiance of female stereotypes and male patriarchy in the Middle East.

From Harper's:
Smiling makes people look older; surprise, younger.

From Harper's:
Better-looking termites cause more damage.

From The New Yorker:
Those who move to a politically dissimilar place tend to become independents; those who move to a place where people vote the same way they do tend to become more extreme in their convictions.

From The New York Times (on Tessa Hadley's Bad Dreams and Other Stories):
Hadley serves up the bitter along with the delicious in these 10 stories.
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