Our very own commenter Natalia Antonova has a guest post at Eteraz about the literary hoax of Norma Khouri’s Honor Lost. Check it out. This is how it begins:
The first page of Norma Khouri’s Honor Lost (Australian title: Forbidden Love) descends swiftly into surrealism; “… the Jordan River,” she writes following a mannered description of Jordanians and their bad business suits, “no longer strong enough to flow down to Amman…” When did the Jordan River flow to Amman? Oh, that’s right, never. One is tempted to give Khouri a chance, and reads on bravely. A few lines down, one is greeted with the following statement: “Bordered by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan…” Jordan bordered by Kuwait and Lebanon? One punches “map of Middle East” into Google, just to make sure one isn’t crazy. Alas – if Khouri’s publishers were to have done the same!
Published in the same year that the United States invaded Iraq, Norma Khouri’s memoir of a tragic honor killing in Jordan was a success. Khouri claimed to be living in “exile” in Australia, after a Muslim friend of hers was murdered by her own family in Amman for loving a Christian man. The story of Dalia had all the right ingredients: a violently paternalistic society, an idealistic heroine, a verboten desire, and a bloody, horrific climax.
It’s a nice look at how wishful thinking leads to uncritical acceptance, just the kind of magical thinking that has gotten us into what Jon Stewart calls Mess O’Potamia.
Read the whole thing.
very well done zuzu — with that mess o potamia analogy. that was witty. =)
Thanks for the love, zuzu. Jon Stewart is all that keeps me from crying about stuff like this, literally.
Honor killings in Muslim countries are very serious, absolutely real human rights issues. Selling fiction as a non-fiction memoir only hurts efforts to fight this. Things are quite bad enough without having to make up bullshit that will only land on our heads, thanks.