About a month ago, Tim Parks wrote a piece for Italian business paper il Sole 24 Ore about Jonathan Franzen’s popularity in Europe. He referred to the piece in a talk that he gave to Milan’s Stampa Estera. That piece is now out in English via the New York Review of Books and interested readers …
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Duomo & Sarpi: stories behind images
In an effort to provide a little context for Magdi’s provocative posters, some reading from the archives in order to illuminate exactly what happened: The praying at piazza Duomo was connected to protests against the Gaza War and happened on January 3, 2009. Organizers of the protests say that the prayer was spontaneous. Coverage in …
Magdi Allam’s Politics of Fear
Some readers have criticized my use of the word “nutjob” to describe Magdi Allam. That is admittedly an imprecise description of a journalist-turned-demagogue whose views are nativist at best and racist at worst. Like Oriana Fallaci before him, Allam has a deep and abiding fear of Muslims in Europe. Unlike Fallaci, Allam was born in …
Life among the Lowly
Journalist-cum-politican Magdi Cristiano Allam loves Italy, he tells us. The Egyptian-born Italian, who made a publicized conversion to Catholicism, seems quick to absorb Italian values — if rampant, no-holds-barred race baiting is an Italian value. Going far beyond provocative and into offensive, his images of Muslims praying in Milan’s piazza Duomo, Chinese rioting against shop …