To Kill a Mockingbird to see a view-changing sequel

Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was pronounced ‘immediately successful’ and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962. It quickly became a classic of modern American literature.

Narrated by Jean Louise Finch “Scout”, the novel tackles issues of gender, race, inequality, social norms as well as serious and harsh issues such as rape and injustice. 

 

The novel tells the story of Scout and her brother, Jem, and their life with their widower father and lawyer, Atticus, who has to defend a black man from a rape charge. The novel shows Atticus’ fair-minded humanitarian values and attitude through his daughter’s eyes.

To Kill a Mockingbird was adapted into a movie in 1962 starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout. The movie received rave reviews and earned more than 10 times its budget. It was won and was nominated for several awards.

Worth noting, To Kill a Mockingbird was translated into Arabic by Cairo University professor of English Literature Dalia El Shayyal.

Earlier this year, Harper Lee announced that she will publish a sequel to the book, titled Go Set a Watchman, which is written from an adult Scout’s perspective. The book is scheduled for publication today, Tuesday, 14 July, 2015.

Go Set a Watchman is said to have been written before To Kill a Mockingbird. The original manuscript was written in the form of flashbacks of an adult Scout. However, Lee’s publisher at the time asked her to focus on Scout and thus To Kill a Mockingbird was born.

Unlike the first book, the new one is not written from Scout’s perspective but instead “closely follows her return to Maycomb after working in New York and her gradual disillusionment with the ingrained attitudes she finds,” according to an article in The Guardian.

The first chapter of Go Set a Watchman was published by The Guardian on Friday, 10 July, 2015. Check it out here.

“One of the great figures of American literature has suffered dramatic reputational damage this weekend. The unexpected early release of shocking plot details from the new novel by Harper Lee, a sequel to her great work To Kill A Mockingbird, has revealed that the noble hero of her first book, Atticus Finch, in later life becomes a racist who seems happy for segregation to continue in Alabama. [It’s] as if the Statue of Liberty had been discovered to have cloven hooves,” according to an article also in The Guardian.

James Daunt, CEO at Waterstones, Britain’s largest book chain, said he expects pre-orders for Go Set a Watchman to surpass those for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

“You don’t need to be clairvoyant to say that it will without doubt be the biggest book of the year, and the biggest book of many a year,” he told The Guardian.

Bookstores across the UK and US are planning several events to celebrate the launch of Lee’s new book, with many events planned at midnight and some places screening the movie of To Kill a Mockingbird.

“This feels like a celebration – a once in a lifetime kind of thing, and like it will be an instant classic,” said Foyles’ head of events Andy Quinn, according to the British newspaper.

A review of Go Set a Watchman published in The Guardian says “Whereas To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated in the first-person by Scout as a young girl looking back a few years to events in the early 1930s, Go Set a Watchman is a third-person narrative, in which twenty-something Scout, now favouring her baptismal name of Jean Louise, returns from New York to visit Atticus, 72 and seriously arthritic, in her home town of Maycomb. Apart from their four-word poetic titles (the new novel’s is taken from the biblical book of Isaiah), the texts are largely independent of each other. Mockingbird is structured in 30 chapters divided between two sections; Watchman consists of seven parts including 19 chapters.”

 

To Kill a Mockingbird has many memorable quotes, here are a few:

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Personally, I have always wanted to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Now, I believe I’ll have a different kind of opportunity to read both books successively.

I also think Go Set a Watchman will be one of the most read books in 2015, even if it’s being published seven months in the year.

The Anatomy of a Grammar Nerd - by Grammarly

Are you a grammar nerd? 
Would you use a word like 'irregardless'? Do you favour the Oxford Comma? 

Check out the inforgraph by Grammarly and see if you fit the profile of a Grammar Nerd ;)

Takhayyal #writing prompt 15: Worlds

Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen, Artists, Poets, Writers, Authors, Dreamers, Friends and Family; Welcome EVERYONE to Nadaness In Motion's bi-weekly picture-prompt writing challenge Takhayyal.

Since several people recommended this image, well here it is. What do you make of it? Write your piece and tell us what it's all about in YOUR eyes.

Picture recommended by friends, found online. Artist unknown.

Arabic for Imagine, Takhayyal is a means to get inspired and spark our writing once more.

Your post can be in English or Arabic, prose, poetry, short story, flash fiction; you name it and write it.

General guidelines:

·        No nudity, violence, and/or abuse.

·        Leave the link to your post in comments below OR post your piece as REPLY to this post

·        Your piece MUST be inspired in some way or other by the above picture

·        Multiple entries allowed

·        It is not required but it is a kind and encouraging gesture to comment on others pieces.

·        Feel free to add your Twitter handle (@....) so I can tag you in my tweets!

Let's IMAGINE! 

Memory - Flash fiction for Takhayyal

I remember.

I remember the days of love, conquests and glory; a time when all was beautiful in the world, or at least for me.

Servants busy here and there, the scent of delicious buttered-lemon chicken, tomato-and-potato soup, seasonings brought from overseas – or at least that's what the inhabitants said.

I could almost smell and taste it myself.

Candlelit dinners in the massive dining room with its many brightly-lit chandeliers; music playing from the sitting room, the garden as green and vibrant as though it had a life of its own.

I remember the girls racing and playing –

"Don't run near the stairs! You'll break your necks!" Julia shouted on an almost-daily basis. Luckily, they never fell.

But someone did fall.

It was said that Julia fell on the stairs whilst carrying a tray left by one of the servants one day. The truth is the servants never left anything behind and Julia never carried anything. The truth is, she never slipped. She was pushed.

Derek, her husband, pushed her from behind to make way for another – a Marysha, also from overseas.

After that, all was dim and black. The girls stopped playing hide and seek. They never laughed again. It was as if they feared something worse would happen if they seek.

People came and went but Julia and her daughters were history etched in my walls.

I remember when the twins were born. Julia nearly died of joy – after several failed pregnancies.

But Derek... he was always in the shadows, laying low as they say. His presence would have given me shivers, if I could shiver. He was a dark and uncomfortable presence. Always awake when everyone was asleep, always quiet, answering in 'Yes' and 'No'.

His dark eyes roam the house, servants, walls, everything. Except the garden. He rarely went out there; only when it was pitch black.

I don't know why Julia married him. I guess he was rich and had the family mansion, but she was a rich too. I will never understand.

Marysha didn't live long here. She soon left Derek for another man. Served him right. But what was done, was done.

Sweet, sociable and often-scolding Julia was gone.

She kept me company for a while until Derek died. She wanted revenge but was too kind and decided to look out for the girls instead. When they passed away, she moved on as ghosts often do.

Time passed and I remained empty.

Seasons hit me with the rain, snow and sun. Summers parched my garden.

The candles ceased to light up. The sun couldn't enter through the windows any more – too dirty. The roof and ceiling were leaking, so were the floors.

I can still hear the girls' laughter on the stairs.

"You'll break your necks, girls!"

"Oh mother. We'll be fine."

Translation, Arwa Saleh, publishing & more - Interview with Samah Selim

This week I'm hosting author-and-literary translator Samah Selim.

Samah Selim is an Egyptian scholar and translator of Arabic literature into English. She studied English literature at Barnard College and earned her BA in 1986. She obtained her PhD from Columbia University in 1997.

Selim is the author of The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985, which was published in 2004.

She is currently working on translating Egyptian novelist Arwa Saleh's Al-Mobtasaroon (المُبتسرون) with the tentative title of The Stillborn.

Samah Selim is the first person to win both the Banipal Prize and the Arkansas Prize for Arabic literary translation.

Personal Preferences:

Q: How do you decide what to translate?

Samah Selim: First the text has to speak to me in a very deep way, usually in a combination of political and aesthetic languages that grab me and won’t let go. Second I have to feel that the text will serve a particular purpose, or set of purposes, in the target language. I want to be able to take the target language reader on a voyage of discovery, learning and pleasure similar to my own when I read the text in the source language. Finally, I have to be confident that I’m up to the task of translating that particular text; that its music, style and language are not entirely outside the reach of my own way of wanting to make sentences and cadences.

Q: What is/are your favourite genre(s) to translate?

SS: Fiction, but lately I have been doing more non-fiction because I feel there is a great need for it. There is so little Arabic non-fiction translated into English. There should be much more. Also, I’ve recently discovered the great pleasure of film subtitling. I’d like to do more of that in the future.

Q: What is/are your least favourite genre(s) to translate?

SS: Poetry, because I’m so bad at it!

Books and Writing

Q: Can you give readers a brief about your book The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985?

SS: The book was based on my doctoral dissertation. So much 20^th century Egyptian fiction is about the countryside and the village, and I wanted to figure out why. I was also very interested in the way the novel as a genre came into the modern Arab, and specifically Egyptian, literary tradition. Many of the earliest Egyptian novels were about a kind of nostalgia for the village and the peasant way of life, and this theme persisted well into the 20^th century.

The book is mostly about how and why Egyptian writers used this theme in their work, how they used it to create very different images of the nation and of modernity, both socially conservative and radical, over the course of the century.

Q: It's been over 10 years since you wrote your book, would you consider writing a new one? What would it be about?

SS: I’m almost finished writing a book on the translation of popular 19^th century European fiction into Arabic in Egypt at the very beginning of the 20^th century. The tentative title is The People’s Entertainments: Translation, Fiction, Culture in Colonial Egypt.

Translation and Techniques:

Q: Translating for 10 years, have your translation techniques or your views regarding the way you handle translation differed over time?

SS: Not really; it never gets easier.

Q: Literary translation is considered the hardest form of translation, why is that and what is the hardest part for you?/How does literary translation differ from any other form of translation (in your opinion)?

SS: You have much more freedom, and therefore more responsibility, with literary translation. Meaning is more fluid and therefore harder to pin down in literary translation than in a piece of criticism or a social science text for example.

Correspondences are more complicated; mood, tone and language register. The hardest part of literary translation for me is staying as close as possible to the voices and textures of the text. It’s easy to fall out of sync with these details and lapse into standardisation or impose a language on the text that isn’t there in the original if you don’t pay close attention.

The Translation Process and Publication:

Q: How many drafts to you usually end up with per book before you get to the final version?

SS: Lots.  Maybe four of five.

Q: How do you describe The Stillborn in terms of translation difficulty? Apart from the title, what other difficulties in translation have you so far encountered with this book?

SS: Arwa was not a stylist, and did not, like most Egyptian writers, then and now, have the benefit of an editor. Her sentences are long, convoluted and sometimes chaotic, but interestingly, this feature of her writing is part of its power and intensity. Parsing her sentences into an English that will make sense to the reader while preserving that rushing power and intensity is sometimes quite difficult.

Q: You said you will have to do a lengthy introduction for The Stillborn, does that mean you will write the intro first or translate the book itself first?

SS: The translation comes first. The after-energy of the translation process itself will be an important part of writing the introduction, and I intend to write about the process, and my relationship to the text as well.

Q: With novels, authors go to beta-readers and book reviewers, what about translators? Who do they go to before and after the final version is published?

SS: Friends, editors, and book lovers first and last. A good friend will read and comment. A good press will take proper care of distribution and reviewing. Word of mouth, social media, and blogs and bloggers are also very helpful.

Q: Copyrights, how are those handled when it comes to translation? (Can someone simply attempt a translation and publish their outcome online for instance?)

SS: This is a very interesting subject. The Berne convention stipulates that copyright goes into the public domain fifty years after the death of the author. Some countries have longer periods (70 years in the US for example). So technically, if the text in question does not fall into these time-frames, then no, a translator cannot simply translate and publish it online or in any other format. However, the rules of ‘fair use’ might give translators some leeway as to what and where they can publish.

In the normal course of things (living, or recently deceased authors), the press which contracts to publish the translation will acquire the translation rights to the text from the author, his/her heirs or the original publisher of the work.  The translator should request (and receive) copyright of his/her translation of the work, and this is legally established through a clause in the translation contract. What this means is that while the press has the right to market, sell and distribute the translation for the period stipulated in the contract, they do not own it and cannot resell it to another entity without the translator’s consent.

Q: Who do literary translators need to go to in order to get their translation published?

SS: S/he needs to do some research about the presses out there that publish translated fiction, their areas of specialisation, what their list looks like, their distribution record, etc. Then s/he contacts individual presses to gauge interest in the project in question. Interested presses will usually ask for a synopsis of the work, a description of why it is important, and at least one sample chapter. Grants and award competitions for translations are also an option. The US National Endowment for the Humanities for example has a generous grant for (published translators), as does PEN. The University of Arkansas gives an annual award for unpublished Arabic to English literary translations which are then published by Syracuse University Press. I’ve noticed that more and more of these types of grants and awards have been popping up lately.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

SS: Yes, about a ‘goal’ and a pet project that I’d like to attempt one day. First I’d like to start learning how to translate in reverse; that is, from English to Arabic. Second, I’d like to write a novel in both English and Arabic that would be ‘translated’ simultaneously to the writing process and be produced as a collective or co-authored work in both languages.

More about Selim:

Translations and Awards

- Neighborhood and Boulevard: Reading through the Modern Arab City by Lebanese writer Khaled Ziadeh.

- Jurji Zaydan's novel Shajarat al-Durr

- Mohamed Makhazangi's Memories of a Meltdown: An Egyptian Between Moscow and Chernobyl.

- Yahya Taher Abdullah's The Collar and the Bracelet.

- Her most recent translation is Egyptian novelist Miral Al-Tahawy's Brooklyn Heights (end of 2011).

In 2011, Selim won the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award for her translation of Jurji Zaydan's novel Shajarat al-Durr, based on the life of the Mamluk sultana. She also won the Banipal prize for Yahya Taher Abdullah's The Collar and the Bracelet.

Untimely: A Time-Travel Romance Guest Post & Giveaway

Untimely by J & L Wells

(An Untimely Romance #1)

Publication date: January 4th 2014

Genres: New Adult, Romance, Time-Travel

Synopsis:

Heather Richardson is a seventeen-year-old British girl whose life quickly becomes an emotional roller coaster when she meets Ruben Brown, a twenty-year-old man who works for her father at Freesdon Manor. As much as Heather wants to love Ruben, the cracks in their relationship begin to show as her eighteenth birthday draws nigh. In a surprising turn of events Heather is confronted by Frank, an intriguing man from a past that dates back to the nineteenth century. His untimely presence changes everything. When she’s thrown back in time by an unrelenting force, Heather realizes that her life is not what it appears to be. Her future has already been written, and it seems she cannot escape her fate, a fate determined by a love lost long ago. In her struggle to find herself, Heather must chose her destiny amidst a dangerous love triangle, vengeful lovers, and passions controlled by the hands of time.

Untimely is book 1 in a new romance series that you are going to love!

“An Untimely Romance is a beautiful breakout novel where love is found in the hidden corners of time. A must read for fans of time travel romance!” ~ The Kindle Book Review

Add Untimely to your Goodreads to-read list: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21092764-untimely

Two Authors, One Book: How It Worked

Guest post by: Laura & Judy Wells

Being mother and daughter we’re close anyway, we spend a lot of time together and chat a lot. We tend to buy covers on a whim, and get a story later on.

Untimely was the only cover we had custom made from scratch, the model is my cousin, Heather, and so we named the main character after her. This made Untimely a more personal novel, like we owed it to my cousin to make it as good as we possibly could.

Laura- I tend to get the ideas for the stories, and then we discuss it together, and our idea’s fly about, there are many arguments… I mean discussions along the way, but we get there in the end.

Untimely has been republished as we have altered Ruben, one of our main characters- we do read reviews, and they have helped us to improve our writing, Ruben isn’t bad… but complex, but book two gives all the reasons as to why he is as he is….

We haven’t got a lot of time to write, due to my 15month old, who thinks my laptop is his personal chewing toy… we have a small window while he sleeps. Our novels take us around 3-5 months from start to finish, and we plan sequels around mid-way through. Untimely was going to be a three book series, but book two tied all the loose ends, and I guess there was nowhere else to go… so untimely finishes with untimely returns.

We’re a good team, and we love writing together.

Buy the book via Amazon and B&N.

About the Authors:

Laura Wells is a swimming teacher, with a love of books, animals and, of course, Jane Austen. Once a national swimmer, she now runs three swim schools of her own. She enjoys spending her spare time with her family and two mad Shiba Inus. She lives in Staffordshire, England.

Judy Wells works at a school; in her spare time she enjoys writing poetry and novels, and spending time with her animals. She also lives in Staffordshire, England.

Laura and Judy are a mother and daughter duo; with Judy’s love of poetry and writing and Laura’s ideas, they work extremely well together. Time-travel and historical romance novels are their passion, and they hope that after you have read their books, you will feel the same.

Connect with the authors via their Website, Facebook Page, and Twitter.