From political op-eds in El País to the acclaimed novels of Javier Marías, eighth-century Arabic poetry to twenty-first-century hip-hop, a discussion about different literary forms and genres and their influence on the world.

With Eric Calderwood, author of ‘On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus’ and Professor of Comparative & World Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Bécquer Seguin, author of ‘The Op-Ed Novel: A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain’ and Assistant Professor of Iberian Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BOOKS

On Earth or in Poems: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978...
During the Middle Ages, the Iberian Peninsula was home not to Spain and Portugal but rather to al-Andalus. Ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties, al-Andalus came to be a shorthand for a legendary place where people from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe; Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace. That reputation is not entirely deserved, yet, as On Earth or in Poems shows, it has had an enduring hold on the imagination, especially for Arab and Muslim artists and thinkers in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Eric Calderwood traces the role of al-Andalus in music and in debates about Arab and Berber identities, Arab and Muslim feminisms, the politics of Palestine and Israel, and immigration and multiculturalism in Europe.

The Op-Ed Novel: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978...
A lively guide to the terroir of contemporary Spanish literature, The Op-Ed Novel offers a bird’s-eye view of both the post-Franco intellectual climate and the changing role of the novelist in public life. “The Op-Ed Novel not only elegantly recounts a vital intellectual and cultural history of post-Franco Spain. Carefully exploring the careers of Spain’s most eminent writers, it demonstrates, too, the osmotic links between political journalism and literary fiction—salutary reading in the English-speaking countries, where politics and literature are still regarded as strangers to each other.”
—Pankaj Mishra, author of Run and Hide