Books
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I Love My Daily Candy!
Chocolate milk balls, black licorice, gummy bears…but today it was extra sweet: http://www.dailycandy.com/los_angeles/article/70636/Magic+Carpet+Ride July 15, 2009 Magic Carpet Ride “The Night Counter,” by Alia Yunis Little pigs and lost siblings make for decent bedtime story fodder. But the life and times of Fatima Abdullah, the madcap matriarch of Alia Yunis’s charming debut, The Night Counter, Continue reading
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THE NIGHT COUNTER A RANDOM HOUSE EDITOR’S PICK
The Night Counter is an Editor’s Pick on the Random House website. Considering the large number of books Random House publishes and my littleness in that pool, this is a good thing and a happy thing. The Night Counter will be in bookstores tomorrow inshallah. I saw it as a book for the first time Continue reading
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THE NIGHT COUNTER UPDATES: GERMANY, THE KINDLE AND MORE
As I get used to being back in L.A.—in some ways I’ve been gone more than a year and in other ways I forget that I haven’t been here for almost a year– I’d just thought I’d take a moment to do an update on what’s going on with The Night Counter, some of which Continue reading
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AN OCCASSIONAL BOOK REVIEW: THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG
THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery According to 12-year old Paloma, Renee Michel, her building’s middle-aged concierge, is like the hedgehog: “a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary –and terribly elegant.” Paloma and Renee are the protagonists of this little hedgehog of a book, with its simple tale of an autodidactic concierge and Continue reading
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A Recipe From the Night Counter: Foul Medamos
In The Night Counter, Laila goes to the Arabic grocery in Detroit and decides for the first time in her marriage not to buy the ingredients to make her Egyptian husband foul. Whether you write it out from Arabic as “foul” or “fool,” I’ll grant you that it doesn’t sound very appetizing in English. But Continue reading
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The Night Counter: A Starred Review in Kirkus
The Night Counter received a starred reveiw in Kirkus Reviews this week. It leaves a tired writer so joyful she is wordless. A link to the original can be found at: http://www.aliayunis.com/press.html (It also inspired Chris Costello, the person who designed this website, and I to update the Events page on the website.) But if Continue reading
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NOT ALL ARAB COUNTRIES HAVE CAMEL CROSSINGS
Not all Arab countries are created equal—most of them have oil as a big part of their identity, but for some it’s the oil that runs cars and for others it’s the stuff the comes from olives. A couple of them, like Algeria, have both. Sometimes the contrast between Arab countries is minimal, such as Continue reading
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The Night Counter One of The Chicago Tribune’s Hot Summer Reads
All my life I have written down on forms “Chicago” when asked for birthplace. So this is particularly sweet for me. Not that I know Chicago well–I’ve only been there once since we moved when I was five. But I’ve always thought I was lucky to be born in such a cool city, despite my Continue reading
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From Publisher’s Weekly…The Night Counter’s First Review
“In this captivating debut, Yunis takes readers on a magic carpet ride….[A] sometimes serious, sometimes funny, but always touching tale of a Middle Eastern family putting down deep roots on U.S. soil.” —Publishers Weekly Continue reading
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The Differences Between Abu Dhabi and LA, or the lack thereof
Ever since I left Los Angeles nine months ago, I’ve been saying to myself, “That’s something I should blog about.” Now that the opportunity has reason, I can’t think of any of those somethings. In fact, there has never been a time when this writer has been left so wordless. I even left this Continue reading
Alia Yunis 