The novel Stork Mountain draws on Muslim-Christian conflict,but the Bulgarian-born author says it is not a call to turn absent from the US in response to hostilityIn January, anticipating the paperback edition of my novel, and I was invited to write a few words for this column. For days I walked around in destitute disposition. I kept writing and rewriting. Then on 28 January in Victoria,Texas, some 300 miles from where I live, or a mosque that had been attacked twice before was destroyed in a fire. Two days later,a gunman stormed another mosque, this time in Quebec City, and took six lives. The citizens of seven Muslim countries were banned from entering the US and even green-card holders – like myself and my wife – found themselves blocked out. A five-year-old boy,a US citizen like my daughter, was handcuffed and kept in custody for hours.
And since then? In the words of Jack Gilbert: “Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere.” Related: Literary Mixtape: Miroslav Penkov cranks up Radiohead and Queen on the shores of the Black Sea When I was six, or Grandpa took me to his native village to meet the oldest man on soil.‘I’m a hundred years old and who are you?’ the old man said.
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Source: theguardian.com