Tag Archives: Emirates Airline Festival of Literature

What’s the first line of your novel?

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It’s a big week for books in the UAE – the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature has started, with more than 140 authors in attendance. I’ve booked all kinds of workshops and talks to learn more tricks of the trade and can’t wait to get stuck in.

Whether he likes it or not, Son1 is coming with me this year – I’ve found him a session entitled Unofficial Minecraft and the Quest for Justice. Seems right up his street.

See you at the LitFest!

See you at the LitFest!

My excitement about the LitFest peaked a few days ago, on the school run, when my fave DJ Catboy ran a segment on Dubai92 Breakfast inviting writers to send in the first line of their novel. I couldn’t resist, and fired off three texts as soon as I got home.

Well, my words got on the radio! They even called me a ‘serial writer’. It was such a feel-good moment, especially when, as wordsmiths, we spend endless hours hunched over our keyboards, tapping away, in isolation.

Here are the lines. They’re from a book of short stories I’m writing about Dubai, a sort of best-of-the-blog mixed with some humourous fiction that (inshallah) I hope to bring you soon! Watch this space – and if you’re a budding novelist, please tell me your first line in the comments section, or on this blog’s Facebook page. I’d LOVE to hear from you, even if your book isn’t finished.

Snatched
I’d just dropped my kids at school when I bumped into her; standing half-hidden behind a palm tree, sobbing into her hankie, big fat tears and Bobbi Brown mascara streaming down her crumpled face.

The Robot Help
“Over my dead body,” Marcie cried, fixing her eyes on her husband’s face to see if he was serious about replacing their housemaid with a robot cleaner; behind him the shadows thrown from the palm tree outside cast long, spindly fingers on the newly painted walls.

The Pearl Divers
Amir peered into the seawater – a shadow caught his eye, a murky flickering with indistinct edges at least fifteen feet down, but it was gone before the smudge became a man.

Your turn!

2016 Year of Reading: Books on the beach

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Exciting times for bookworms in the UAE as the government tackles the Arab reading crisis

Hot on the heels of those clever Smart Palms I blogged about last year (offering free wi-fi and charging points), there’s a new initiative coming to Dubai’s beaches which book lovers are going to love.

R&R: Try some reading & relaxation on the beach

R&R: Try some
reading & relaxation on the beach

The first set of library kiosks are being installed at Kite Beach in Umm Suqueim and Al Mamzar Beach, so sun-seekers can borrow books to read while relaxing. On leaving the beach, you return your book, or you can take a stroll along the sand and hand it back in at any of the other seaside library units.

What a great idea! It’s all part of the 2016 Year of Reading in the UAE – a subject close to my heart as I attempt (and often fail!) to instill a love of reading in my own boys. Each night, after tackling Son2’s Oxford Reading Tree books, I bring out the Kindle and present it to Son1 with a wry smile. I then set the stop watch on my phone: 15 minutes, “That’s ALL! … Right, Go…” I pick books I really think he’ll like, but still he’s reluctant, putting on a scowly face and stopping the moment the alarm rings.

The annual average reading rate for an Arab child is six minutes

Anyway… I will persevere. But it seems my problem is part of a wider, regional trend that’s referred to as “the reading crisis in the Arab world”. My sons are your typical expat kids, but among their Arab compatriots, reading levels are even lower.

The average reading time for an Arab child is six minutes a year, compared with 12,000 minutes for children in the West. To put this in perspective, for every six minutes spent reading by an Arab child, a child of similar age in the West will have been reading for 200 hours.

Coming soon in Arabic

Coming soon in Arabic

Last night, at a talk I attended about the future of publishing in the UAE, I heard why this crisis is so severe. Not only is there a lack of diversity in Arabic children’s books, but several studies of UAE readers have found that a national culture of reading for pleasure is still in its early stages. Reading is generally viewed as a duty, with many UAE youth finding it difficult or boring. “The bigger focus in this region has been on oral story telling and poetry,” said Isobel Abulhoul, director of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.

Several moves are afoot in the UAE to remedy the situation – such as the introduction of mobile libraries, Sharjah’s library-for-every-home scheme (delivering one million books to families in the emirate); and the Arab Reading Challenge, with AED11m ($3m) in cash prizes. (As someone who’s paid my own kids to read in the past, I can’t comment!).

Julie Till, head of business development at Oxford University Press, also pointed out that the much-loved Oxford Reading Tree books are set to be introduced in Arabic with original content. “We’re looking at things like paper quality, fonts – how to make children want to read the books,” said Julie. “It’s a great step, and I believe we’re at a tipping point in Arabic publishing.”

Changing the mindset of a whole society won’t happen overnight, warns Isobel, but she’s optimistic, and thankful that all the years she’s spent talking about the importance of literacy, reading and writing have been validated with such enthusiasm. “The government has taken a huge leap,” she says, “with the 2016 year of reading and initiatives at the highest levels to ensure the future generation is literate.”

So, watch out kiddos – your 15 minutes-a-night isn’t about to stop any time soon! And readers, look out for the solar-powered library kiosks the next time you’re on Kite or Al Mamzar beaches. There’s going to be titles in English and Arabic, as well as a selection of children’s books, offering bookworms “a cheerful read”. While you’ve got the sand between your toes and the waves crashing in your ears, just be careful not to get the pages covered in suntan lotion and ice cream!

Dark Fiction: Coming Home

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If you love books, you’ve probably noticed that a popular genre recently has been dark fiction. Call it psychological suspense or ‘suburban noir’, the trendsetter was the brilliant ‘Gone Girl’, a novel that spawned a raft of books about conflicted families in peril.

I’d been eagerly awaiting the release of Coming Home – the debut domestic thriller by Expat Telegraph blogger and journalist Annabel Kantaria – and I wasn’t disappointed: the tag line, ‘The darker the secrets, the closer they lie’ rang true the whole way through, and I was kept guessing right until the very end by the ambiguous characters.

xxxxxx

A must-read for anyone who thinks their family is dysfunctional

I’m not going to give away too much about the plot, suffice to say it’s about 28-year-old Evie, who lives in Dubai and gets the phone call every expat dreads: her father has died unexpectedly and she must return home, to the web of lies spun by her family. The first clue is that her mother is acting strangely. Then, as one secret after another is revealed in quick succession, like a hail of stones, Evie realises that everything she thought she knew about her parents is a manipulation of the truth.

I caught Annabel at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in March, and the thing that struck me was the dedication it takes to write a novel that actually ends up on bookshelves. “I can’t quite believe it’s my book,” she said, revealing that it was two years in the making, with the idea first forming five years before that.

Everything changed for Annabel when she won the festival’s Montegrappa First Fiction competition in 2013. Her submission, the first chapter of ‘The Marmalade Murders’, caught the eye of literary agent Luigi Bonomi. Six weeks later, she had a 60,000-word first draft ready for him; two more drafts followed, then came the book deal, with Harlequin Mira – and more edits, which Annabel worked on while her two children were off school for the summer holidays. “I must have written 200,000 words in total, of which 90,000 made it into the finished book.”

Dubai as Evie’s expat location was edited in and out, and her character went through various guises. “At first, she had children, but as she had to go away for five weeks, they got in the way,” said Annabel. “Then she was a divorcee, but got too bitter, so that didn’t work either.”

The hard work was all worth it though – at the literary festival, Annabel enjoyed a proud moment signing a copy of her book for Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, and her gripping novel is already being well received. She’s currently working on her second book, with a third in the pipeline.

“I’m very fortunate that my children go to school,” she told us. “They leave the house at 7am, and I’m at my computer at 7.10am, in my pyjamas – writing in two-hour blocks until 2pm.”

Her next shift takes place at 2.30am, when her husband frequently hears the sound of a pencil scratching in the dark. “Some of my best ideas and dialogue come to me in the middle of the night,” she said.

Coming Home is available in Dubai already and launches in the UK tomorrow – buy it here (listed as one of Amazon’s Rising Stars 2015)