This Is Not A Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature, edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton. Courtesy Bloomsbury
This Is Not A Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature, edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton. Courtesy Bloomsbury

Book news: Palestine Festival of Literature celebrates its 10th anniversary and more



PalFest in print

The remarkable Palestine Festival of Literature celebrates its 10th anniversary this week, but the fun will not end tomorrow. Next month, Bloomsbury will publish This Is Not A Border, an anthology of "reportage and reflection" from the festival. Edited by PalFest co-founders Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton, it features poems, stories and essays from a wide range of writers, including Mohammed Hanif, Teju Cole, Claire Messud, Suad Amiry and Pankaj Mishra.

Winter is coming. Still...

The six-year wait for the next instalment in George R R Martin's A Song Of Fire And Ice saga continues. We were promised The Winds of Winter would be published this year but fans looking forward to it – rather than the next season of the TV adaptation (which has now overtaken the source novels) – might have been slightly perturbed by the announcement last week that Martin is now working not only on a new TV sci-fi series called Nightflyers (a 1980 novella), but also ideas for four Game of Thrones TV spin-offs. Best not hold your breath for that new novel, then...

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life goes on...

Next month marks the 15th anniversary of the publication of Yann Martel's wonderful Booker Prize winner Life of Pi, and publishers Canongate are celebrating with a new audio edition narrated by British comedian and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar, best known for the TV comedies Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42. "Whether you're listening in your car or at home, I wish you luck and fortitude with Pi and Richard Parker and I hope you reach the coast of Mexico," Martel told The Bookseller.

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Business Insights
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Game Of Thrones Season Seven: A Bluffers Guide

Want to sound on message about the biggest show on television without actually watching it? Best not to get locked into the labyrinthine tales of revenge and royalty: as Isaac Hempstead Wright put it, all you really need to know from now on is that there’s going to be a huge fight between humans and the armies of undead White Walkers.

The season ended with a dragon captured by the Night King blowing apart the huge wall of ice that separates the human world from its less appealing counterpart. Not that some of the humans in Westeros have been particularly appealing, either.

Anyway, the White Walkers are now free to cause any kind of havoc they wish, and as Liam Cunningham told us: “Westeros may be zombie land after the Night King has finished.” If the various human factions don’t put aside their differences in season 8, we could be looking at The Walking Dead: The Medieval Years

 

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Our legal columnist

Name: Yousef Al Bahar

Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994

Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers

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Day 4, Dubai Test: At a glance

Moment of the day Lahiru Gamage appeared to have been hard done by when he had his dismissal of Sami Aslam chalked off for a no-ball. Replays suggested he had not overstepped. No matter. Two balls later, the exact same combination – Gamage the bowler and Kusal Mendis at second slip – combined again to send Aslam back.

Stat of the day Haris Sohail took three wickets for one run in the only over he bowled, to end the Sri Lanka second innings in a hurry. That was as many as he had managed in total in his 10-year, 58-match first-class career to date. It was also the first time a bowler had taken three wickets having bowled just one over in an innings in Tests.

The verdict Just 119 more and with five wickets remaining seems like a perfectly attainable target for Pakistan. Factor in the fact the pitch is worn, is turning prodigiously, and that Sri Lanka’s seam bowlers have also been finding the strip to their liking, it is apparent the task is still a tough one. Still, though, thanks to Asad Shafiq and Sarfraz Ahmed, it is possible.