Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
New Morocco Forum
There is a new Yahoo Groups list devoted to the exchange of information between foreigners living and working in Morocco.
To join, visit the Morocco Scholars website:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Morocco_Scholars/
and then follow the instructions for sending a short note to the list's moderator.
This list is intended to facilitate the answering and asking of questions and the posting of useful information and tips regarding living, working, and conducting research in Morocco. Examples of appropriate uses of the list include finding and passing on apartments and furniture, asking how to gain research clearance at a particular library, asking where to find a good tailor, asking how to get a carte de sejour or a phone line, or posting the information you've collected regarding shipping possessions back to your home country.
Advertisements and commercial notices are better placed in the classified ads provided by ArtiZany. The Morocco Scholars list is also not designed to focus on tourism-related questions, although some may be appropriate. For general news about Morocco - go to The View From Fez.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Tuesday, 16 January 2007
Please give books to Meknes ALC
The Meknes ALC is trying to acquire a bunch of paperbacks for our student library, but before we go and buy new ones and pay exorbitant shipping and customs, we were hoping there would be
some people in Morocco with extra books lying around that might want to send them our way (or if they're in Fez, I'd be happy to just come pick 'em up).
If anyone does have some books , please contact me via ArtiZany for instructions. Thanks!
Contact: Jill c/- ArtiZany@gmail.com
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
some people in Morocco with extra books lying around that might want to send them our way (or if they're in Fez, I'd be happy to just come pick 'em up).
If anyone does have some books , please contact me via ArtiZany for instructions. Thanks!
Contact: Jill c/- ArtiZany@gmail.com
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Monday, 11 December 2006
Classified Adverts
Need accommodation? Have old books, clothes or travel gear to sell? Are you looking for second-hand zellij? Do you need a traveling companion?
Personal advertisements are free!
Just email your advert - and we'll do the rest. Let us know if you want to be contacted by phone or email by a buyer.
Enjoy! : ArtiZany - artizany@gmail.com
Visit our - Moroccan Souq Online
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
Personal advertisements are free!
Just email your advert - and we'll do the rest. Let us know if you want to be contacted by phone or email by a buyer.
Enjoy! : ArtiZany - artizany@gmail.com
Visit our - Moroccan Souq Online
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
A Moroccan thriller!
"McCutcheon is most compelling describing the back streets of Morocco, especially the labyrinthine laneways of Fez."
Jeff Popple, writing in the Canberra Times says:
The best of the current crop of terrorist novels is The Cobbler's Apprentice, by Australian author Sandy McCutcheon. This intelligent novel blends the machinations of the spy novel with the action and geopolitics of the international thriller to produce a credible and truly scary read. McCutcheon has a good grasp of modern-day politics and has concocted a clever plot that grips the reader's attention from the opening page to the final twist.
This is no black and white account of terrorism but an intricate, mufti-layered tale that captures the complexity of the war on terrorism and the people caught up in it. This is McCutcheon's finest novel to date and the best spy thriller I have read in some time.
Patricia Escalon writing for the Australia Council The Program says:
A spook thriller in the post-millenial jihadi era, The Cobbler's Apprentice keeps a furious pace, reeling in the reader from the opening sentences.
As a thriller, The Cobbler’s Apprentice hits the spot almost unerringly. Each chapter raises the stakes, compelling the reader to continue until the last page.
The bazaars in Fez heave around us. The smells assault our nostrils in our imagination. Funnily enough, we identify with Sami, our young mujahedeen. McCutcheon paints a very human portrait of Sami, one that reveals the motivations behind suicide bombers and the extremes that drive them to violence. Rather than demonising Islamic terrorism, particularly Palestinian, McCutcheon opens a window into their desperate situation. This may well be the way forward in spy thrillers.
Ross Fitzgerald writing in The Australian:
SANDY McCutcheon's latest fictive offering has a lot going for it. The novel's central conceit -- terrorism and counter-terrorism via bacteriological warfare -- works extremely well. Along with airborne anthrax, pneumonic plague is one of the most virulent means of causing large-scale human casualties: the prospect of carriers infecting masses of people, especially in urban areas in the West, is terrifying indeed.
McCutcheon is most compelling describing the back streets of Morocco, especially the labyrinthine laneways of Fez. As a long-time Western agent reminisces, "Morocco had become one of his favourite destinations. Three times he had spent vacations touring the country, and twice agency business had taken him to Casablanca. Although he enjoyed most places in the country, it was Fez, with its extraordinary medina and old gardens, that lured him back time and again."
The Cobbler's Apprentice succeeds where many such novels fail.
The character of young Samir as a biological weapon of mass destruction, now aimed at those who released him, is utterly unforgettable, as is the determined and fully rounded photojournalist Nicolas Lander.
Jan Hallam writing in the Sunday Times says:
Sandy McCutcheon is one of a few mass market Australian novelists to tackle terrorism.
His recent thriller, Black Widow, looks at the aftermath of the 2004 Beslan siege, while his latest, The Cobbler’s Apprentice, follows a terror suspect, Samir Al-Hassani, who leaves Guantanamo Bay and becomes an agent of mass destruction.
It’s a gripping read because of its eerie prescience. In McCutcheon’s professional hands, it will also have you reading on the edge of your seats.
Samela Harris Adelaide Advertiser
This book is nothing less than a rip-roaring action thriller with politicians and thugs, scientists and spies — and an unnerving sense of the possible.
Copies can be purchased by following this link: Gleebooks Online.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
Black Widow - A novel on the aftermath of Beslan.
Black Widow is one of the most moving and thought provoking books of the year, a psychological thriller that humanises a tragedy and examines the possible result of succumbing to the “eye-for-an-eye” urge that would pass through all victims. Beautifully paced and sensitively presented this is an outstanding novel.-Australian Crime Fiction Database at www.crimedownunder.com
The Bottom Line: The Beslan School siege is the basis from which this beautifully told story of revenge comes. One of the books of the year.
Review:
"We have not survived Beslan. We are no longer the people we were before September the first. We are different people now. Deep in all of us, like deeply buried shrapnel, lies the legacy of those days. Like so many others, it has become part of who we are. We are Beslan."
Sandy McCutcheon has taken a tragic real-life event and expanded it out into a fascinating “what-if” scenario that blurs the line between fact and fiction. The impotent feelings of rage that I should imagine are experienced by every victim of terrorism are given vent in Black Widow a tale that chronicles a carefully planned and executed act of revenge.
This all-consuming need for revenge forms the basis for a deeply moving story that masterfully combines the details of the horrors inside the walls of a Beslan school with a gripping fictional response and the disturbing emotional fallout that followed. The terrifying and dramatic takeover of the Beslan Number One School by a group of Chechen terrorists in September 2004 saw over 1300 men, women and children taken hostage. Over the next 3 days were held in complete terror, some were executed, they were kept in the most trying of conditions on the gymnasium floor without water and were subjected to traumatic scenes that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. When the siege was finally ended by Russian soldiers, the lives of 1300 people had been changed forever.
This fictional account is about six teachers who survived the horrors of the school massacre in Beslan and have put together a gripping memorial to honour the dead on the anniversary of the tragic event. Over three days they plan to remember the events that have scarred their lives, only this time, they’re the ones who are going to be in control, they’re the ones who would be heard, and they’re the ones who will decide whether their captives will live or die.
Though the process is supposed to be a healing one, once the memories are recalled, the women find themselves battling to survive all over again. This time they’ve got to escape from themselves. It’s an emotionally harrowing story that I found deeply moving making what had previously been simply a news story from the other side of the world into a much more personal and moving tragedy.
Black Widow is a methodical recounting of the events that took place on September 1, 2004, only now these events are being paced by the memorial 2 years later. Minute for minute the women pay their respects to the dead and try to explain the pain and suffering to their captives, in fact, they’d like nothing better than to have their captives suffer the way they did.
McCutcheon has poured immense measures of emotion into his story. Katya, the story’s narrator is a noted storyteller and it’s through her lectures and anecdotes told to the captives that we gain a true idea of just how deeply they have been marked. Their need to hurt in retaliation exudes from each of the women, in their words and actions with stinging barbs and promises of a cruel death designed to strike fear in their hostage’s hearts.
In my opinion Black Widow is one of the most moving and thought provoking books of the year, a psychological thriller that humanises a tragedy and examines the possible result of succumbing to the “eye-for-an-eye” urge that would pass through all victims. Beautifully paced and sensitively presented this is an outstanding novel.
Copies can be purchased by following this link: Gleebooks Online.
MORE REVIEWS:
'Would you be capable of killing to avenge the death of a child? … — a story like Beslan can seem so very far away. In Black Widow, McCutcheon brings it right up close in chilling, painful detail. The cleverly constructed plot will propel you through the pain of it. It's a taut psychological drama carefully written with compassion and empathy.' — Lucy Clark, Sunday Telegraph
‘If you like the work of John Le Carré and Martin Cruz Smith, you’ll like the work of Sandy McCutcheon.’— Herald Sun
Each of Katya's moments to camera prompts a flashback on her part to the tragic turn of events in Beslan, which, to McCutcheon's credit, are vividly rendered. With the outcome already known, it's testimony to an artful narrative structure that one feels compelled to read on given such confronting revelations about events that we know to be true.
In Black Widow, McCutcheon takes political events of the recent past and gives them an immediate human dimension. The fact that his focus is primarily on the women and children caught up in a war about power is understandable and worthy. The book evokes a strong sense of moral outrage and compassion.- Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald & The Age (Melbourne)
Six female teachers who survived the Beslan school massacre by Chechen terrorists in 2004 that ended with 331 people dead – half of them children – decide on a terrible act of revenge and justice. They dress in the same black garb as the terrorists and take the sons and a daughter of the terrorists hostage. While a camera rolls they retell the horrors of what happened inside the school, moment by moment, in front of the hostages. McCutcheon narrates a taut psychological drama that challenges notions of revenge and justice – Frank Walker – Sun Herald
A taut and compelling psychological thriller, Black Widow is an astonishing achievement.
Copies can be purchased by following this link: Gleebooks Online.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
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