Events Galore: Alisa Ganieva and Celebrations of Sphinx

Alisa Ganieva is in the USA!

Alisa Ganieva has arrived in the US! TONIGHT she is reading in NYC at the awesomely amazing bookstore BOOK CULTURE on the Upper West Side (W. 112th St.), and then discussing her work with Ronald Meyer (Harriman Institute of Slavic Studies at Columbia University). The event is co-sponsored by Read Russia.

Alisa will also be reading in Iowa City at Prairie Lights Bookstore on June 25th w/ Kiki Petrosino & Karim Alrawi.

Ganieva is in the US to teach a class at the University of Iowa‘s International Writing Program, of which she is a 2012 alumna:

Reviews of Ganieva’s The Mountain and the Wall are starting to roll in, and they’re exemplary:

• The Modern Novel

An excellent story about the rise of Islam, the fate of the republics in post-Soviet Russia and the traditions of a people little known in the West.

• David Hebblethwaite’s Book Blog

I have to be honest and admit straight away that I’d never even heard of Dagestan until I read this book, so I come to write this review more tentatively than I might usually. In a way, though, that’s quite appropriate; because it seems to me that Ganieva’s novel is very much concerned with hearsay and the limits of knowledge.

We also have two incredibly amazing events coming up to celebrate the brilliance that is Anne Garréta‘s SPHINX with the book’s translator, Emma Ramadan:

• June 23rd – A Celebration of Sphinx w/ translator Emma Ramadan, Oulipomember Daniel Levin Becker, and writer/critic Scott Esposito at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco, CA at 7:30pm. Event info here.

• July 1 – A Celebration of Sphinx w/ translator Emma Ramadan, Sarah Gerard (author of Binary Star, pub. by Two Dollar Radio), and Ian Dreiblatt (poet, Russian translator, good dude) at Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York at 7pm. Event info here.

The wave of rave reviews for Sphinx keeps growing:

• “The Daring Young Women on the Flying Trapeze” by Chris Clarke in The Quarterly Conversation:

Ramadan is not simply walking along underneath Garréta’s tightrope, looking up, and parroting her every movement. This is not a separate, unconnected tightrope—the two of them are intimately and inextricably connected.

• Review by Audrey Schoeman in Goodbye to All This:

I loved the book; it was a fully immersive reading experience.

• The Dallas Observer lists Sphinx as one of its 13 Books to Read this Summer:

Reading Anne Garréta’s Sphinx – or any work by a member of the Oulipo, I imagine – is like unraveling a puzzle.