The 2009-2010 series matches this year's for famous names in world literature

As the esteemed Babel—a series of lectures, readings, and related events presented by Just Buffalo Literary Center—approaches the end of its second season and prepares for its third, its organizers face the reality of the series’ runaway success. This year, the series is moving from its former home at Babeville to a venue nearly triple in size: Kleinhans Music Hall. In addition, the group is sponsoring Early Bird ticket specials, which allow patrons to avoid subscription hikes and enjoy this year’s rates for next year’s talks if purchased before April 17, the date of the final event in the 2008/2009 series.

It may have seemed a difficult tsask to match this years lineup of influential, international voices: Chinua Achebe, Michael Ondaatje, Marjane Satrapi, and finally—next Friday, April 17, at Kleinhans Music Hall—Isabel Allende. Still, Just Buffalo has managed to match themselves. While the new season isn’t set to kick off until October, we’re previewing the series now, allowing readers plenty of time to gather the required texts in preparation for yet another year of literary global unification.

A.S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt, also known as Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, is the author of more than 20 books, including novels, poetry, and short stories. Among her works is arguably her most renowned, Possession, which chronicles the relationship of two contemporary academics through the lens of the 19th-century poets they’re researching. Byatt was awarded the Booker Prize for the novel in 1990. She published her first work, The Shadow of the Sun, in 1964. That story of a young woman struggling to step out from behind the shadow of a dominant father established Byatt’s place on the global feminist scene, and she has continued to create powerful and intellectual female characters throughout her remarkable career in literature, which has spanned roughly 50 years. Armed with ten—yes, ten—honorary degrees from universities peppered throughout the United Kingdom, Byatt represents Great Britain in this year’s series, and her uniquely empowering insistence on the preeminence of the feminine intellect will no doubt enthrall the Babel audience.

A.S. Byatt visits Kleinhans Music Hall on October 9, 2009 at 8pm.

Ha Jin

Ha Jin, like A.S. Byatt, writes novels, short fiction, and poetry, and his biography reads like a list of the literary world’s highest honors. His novel Waiting, a tale of a soldier who lives 18 years in fear of certain persecution, waiting to divorce his wife in favor of the mistress he really loves, earned both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award honoring American Fiction in 1999. He was bestowed a second PEN/Faulkner in 2005 for War Trash, which was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. While Jin now lives in the United States and teaches at Boston University, his works are all centered around his experiences as a young undergraduate living in communist China. To an unfamiliar reader, a Chinese man who writes literature about China, set in China with the intention of exposure only in America may seem slightly removed, but considering the underlying theme of Babel, which serves to bring a global literary awareness to its audience, Ha Jin’s life and works seem a perfect fit for the event.

Ha Jin visits Kleinhans Music Hall on November 20 at 8pm.

Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi is an Iranian American writer and academic who rose from obscurity when her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller list in 2003. The book chronicles Nafisi’s time living under the Islamic Republic of Iran between 1978 and 1981, dealing in particular with the plight of women through her own personal struggle under the regime. Among other instances, Nafisi describes her decision to refuse to don the veil while teaching in the University of Tehran—a protest far removed from our Western challenges, but certainly a dangerous one for an Iranian woman during such unstable times. What is perhaps most interesting about Nafisi, and in particular her presentation of the feminine experience in Iran during the time of the Islamic Republic, is the criticism she has garnered: Many critics have characterized her views on the present conflict in the Middle East as “neo-conservative,” with Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi going so far as to assert, “To me there is no difference between Lynndie England and Azar Nafisi.” Nevertheless, countless readers have been empowered by Nafisi’s insistence on a return to a time when women with unlimited freedoms didn’t take them for granted.

Azar Nafisi visits Kleinhans Music Hall on March 5, 2010 at 8pm.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie has achieved status as a pop culture icon for the learned over the past 30 years, since winning the Booker Prize for his second novel, Midnight’s Children, in 1981. (The novel even went on to win The Best of the Booker, celebrating the greatest work ever to win the prize.) Since that time, Rushdie has catapulted to literary fame with a series of novels bearing his trademark style of magical realism combined with historical fact, most taking place on the Indian subcontinent. Arguably, and perhaps most tragically, Rushdie’s greatest claim to fame is the backlash he experienced after publishing his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. The work, inspired by the life of Muhammad, contained what many Muslims believed to be blasphemous references, leading Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers. Luckily, the edict was a failure, unless its aim was to amplify Rushdie’s celebrity. The writer has since grown into an activist and an icon, if not for his emergence as a political commentator on American forums like Real Time with Bill Maher, then certainly for his failed marriage to Top Chef host (and stunning beauty) Padma Lakshmi. He is perhaps one of the most influential writers Babel has yet to secure, and his visit to Buffalo is sure ignite his no doubt staggering local fan base.

Salman Rushdie visits Kleinhans Music Hall on April 16, 2010 at 8pm.

For more information on Babel and its related events, as well as for tickets to next year’s series or to next week’s appearance by Isabel Allende, call 832-5400 or visit www.justbuffalo.org.