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There are writers I return to no matter what I'm working on, writers like the South African J.M. Coetzee. He has an ability to make you feel that he is writing for you alone.

Laila Lalami

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Laila Lalami
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: February 24
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New Sallee
Feels
Writers
Writing
South
Make
Return
Like
Alone
Working
Ability
Matter
Coetzee
Feel
African

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In some ways, I think it's the closest that we come to the truth — is in the form of fiction.
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I also read a lot of nonfiction. I just got Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. I felt like what with everything that is going on with the president [Donald trump] and the parallels with [Richard] Nixon's presidency, I needed to know more about the man.
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Thing that was very different for me is that an American child's reading is filled with Americans.
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The universe had an odd sense of fairness it took away things one did not want to give up, and then gave things one did not ask for.
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There is a insularity within American fiction even for adults. It's very tough for books in translation in the US.
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I love James Baldwin essays, but also his novels. I recently read Another Country. I couldn't believe how ahead of his time he was.
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No one wrote better about the sin of pride, the corruption of power and the redemption of love. I will miss you, Gabriel García Márquez.
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Few [books] get translated and the ones that do have trouble making it into the mainstream. It's more likely that Americans will discover another culture through an American writer rather read a writer from that culture.
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A name is precious it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too.
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I [read] The Book of Unknown Americans, which is by a friend of mine, Cristina Henriquez, and is about two Latino, immigrant families who live in Delaware. I'm interested in reading things from different perspectives.
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I began reading in French. I didn't read in English until high school.
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Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.
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