Laila Lalami

Laila Lalami, the author of Secret Son, is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

California's Higher Education Crisis

June 12, 2009

Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts would be an unmitigated disaster for California's public universities.

2008

Looking Past Clichés

May 6, 2008

The Visitor is that rare film that defines Arabs not as ethnic or religious stereotypes but as individuals.
The Fake Prince of Facebook

February 21, 2008

When a young Moroccan computer engineer created a fake Facebook profile for the Crown Prince of Morocco, the result was jail, torture and a very uncertain future.
The Dot Matrix

January 3, 2008

In I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, novelist Sinan Antoon explores themes of love, loss, identity and resistance in the face of political oppression.

Beyond the Veil

November 21, 2007

A new book examines headscarf hysteria and the politics of identity in contemporary France.
Revenants

October 25, 2007

In South African writer Zakes Mda's fiction, the past hovers like a ghost--seductive and terrifying.

Letters

August 31, 2006
Naguib Mahfouz: An Appreciation

August 31, 2006

Egypt has been deprived of its greatest living writer, and the world has lost one of its most humane literary figures.
The Missionary Position

June 1, 2006

Like radical Islamists and American interventionists, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's The Caged Virgin and Irshad Manji's The Trouble With Islam Today express great concern for Muslim women. But the trouble is not necessarily with Islam.
Exile and the Kingdom

March 2, 2006

In his newest novel The Last Friend, Tahar Ben Jelloun draws from his experiences as a writer and activist under Morocco's repressive monarchy.

Love and Betrayal in Colonial Africa

September 8, 2005

Abdulrazak Gurnah's seventh book, Desertion, revisits the theme of exile and expands it to relationships---between lovers, between families, between countries.