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Stoning the Devil Garry Craig Powell 9781908011541 Books

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Stoning the Devil Garry Craig Powell 9781908011541 Books

I should begin by saying that I know Garry Powell personally and have been familiar with his writing for some time. While what follows is a positive review of his work, I can assure anyone reading this that I wouldn't publish this if I didn't honestly feel the work deserved it.

Garry Powell is an extraordinary writer, and it is no exaggeration to say he is one of the most masterful stylists currently writing in English. That his debut novel-in-stories, Stoning the Devil, has not received more press is both shocking and disappointing--this work is in many ways peerless.

The overlapping stories in this novel shatter the dull, tinted window through which Westerners so often view the Arab world, and bring us nose-to-nose with that world in a way that perhaps makes it more comprehensible to many of us. The conflicts and dramas marking these stories may make some readers wince, but Conrad, too, did his fair share of this.

Powell writes like an angel--a dark and fearless one--beautifully and with a focus that often falls on sexual politics and race. These linked stories are grippingly told and deeply human, and it is the humanizing aspect of the work that draws readers in most brilliantly. It is certainly what makes the work stay with readers long after they put the book down.

The esteemed writer Naomi Shihab Nye has written that "Powell has an astonishing ability to create characters with swift and haunting power," and one could easily apply the same notion to the landscape he depicts. The United Arab Emirates, in which these linked stories are set, emerges over time as one of the most important characters of all.

This novel reads in the way we might view a riveting movie. An entire world is painted, peopled, and portrayed in what can be read in a single sitting, and we are shown that world in its varied colors, complex history, and multitude of human conflicts. Stoning the Devil is an important novel (it is no surprise that one story, "Kamila's Price," appeared in the "Best American" series) and one that I immediately went back to after finishing it for its language, imagery, and complex human dramas.


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Stoning the Devil Garry Craig Powell 9781908011541 Books Reviews

Forget the daily streams of "YouTube" videos shown on CNN that can't be "independently confirmed". Get ready for the real, raw emotions and actions of people in a culture under transformation - due to influences by the "West". Decide for yourself whether there is any hope, or only despair. If this book doesn't impact your world view, NOTHING WILL! Thank you Garry Craig Powell for giving voice to the human condition that we all experience, even if we are not willing to admit it.
While the tales and customs appear to be wild and foreign at the onset, this novel digs deep into human truths that are not isolated to far away lands. Powell is bold with his topic and careful with his description. The exotic locals, voices of the women, and open handling of sexual topics will keep you reading. I expect this one to stick around for the long haul, and I look forward to the next.
This is an excellent novel reaching far into the human experience. It is well written, deep and in some ways raw. Powell's exploration of the themes of environment, culture, descent, distortion and ultimately redemption, are all wonderfully handled.

The book shows the best and worst of the human spirit. I loved the characterisation and the complex array of characters and their interactions is deftly handled. Powell avoids any tendency towards stereotyping and his personal experience of the terrain and culture of the Gulf and its people shines throughout, making the characters alive and real. The book takes us westerners into a different world, yet strangely familiar in its base themes and motives but hopeful in its capacity for change and the exaltation of the human spirit.

Overall, a brilliant novel and one which marks Powell as a writer of the highest class and deepest measure. Someone to watch, for sure.
Garry Craig Powell's Stoning the Devil is a great collection of stories. Although an outsider in the Middle East, the author moves with a particular ease through all the social structures, and through sentiments and sensibilities of both Arabs and the expats. There are many conflicts and clashes in Powell's stories but not of civilizations, rather clashes within civilizations, within and between individuals caught in all manner of not-quite-ideal circumstances.

Powell's empathy seems mostly given to all the different women that he made into protagonists of his stories. They're often broken and victimized but strong and complex individuals. They also seem to stand, by will or circumstances, at the margins of politics and ideological rhetoric. The men in general, Arabs and Westerners are much more defined by their politics, prejudices, class, and most often by their sexuality. Many of Powell's male characters behave like brutes driven by their sexuality much more than by anything else. Religious and political persuasions are often made to work toward the satisfaction of their desires, and although they live in modern times, men have not evolved quite enough. Occasionally they get a little sympathy from the women, even as these women struggle to free themselves from all the men they get entangled with, but the narrator' voice (or voices) often takes a more critical and cynical stance. This creates an amazing tension that gives the reader a richer experience of all the different states of the affairs in all the troubled worlds they inhabit.

In contrast to the passages critical of Arab men, I particularly liked the reflections on the Western men in the region. For instance "Why had no western fiction writers taken on the Gulf? Were they afraid of looking in the mirror?" "Colin realized, he had seen himself as a latter-day champion of the Arab underdogs, only to find that they-his own wife included-regarded him as an imperialist." Powell weaves the stories of a few different but recurring characters in the "short-cuts" fashion. Even though sex and sexual politics permeates the entire collection, as if to confirm the fact that "what we talk about when we talk about the Arab world(s)" is most often sexual politics. However, the stories contain plenty of references to historical traumas and status of migrants of any nationality. I could identify with the Palestinian refugees who have suffered loss in Sabra and Shatila massacres but who were treated as any other immigrants even among other Arabs. I also liked Powell's use of interesting intertext, in particular Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, which recurs throughout the collection.
I should begin by saying that I know Garry Powell personally and have been familiar with his writing for some time. While what follows is a positive review of his work, I can assure anyone reading this that I wouldn't publish this if I didn't honestly feel the work deserved it.

Garry Powell is an extraordinary writer, and it is no exaggeration to say he is one of the most masterful stylists currently writing in English. That his debut novel-in-stories, Stoning the Devil, has not received more press is both shocking and disappointing--this work is in many ways peerless.

The overlapping stories in this novel shatter the dull, tinted window through which Westerners so often view the Arab world, and bring us nose-to-nose with that world in a way that perhaps makes it more comprehensible to many of us. The conflicts and dramas marking these stories may make some readers wince, but Conrad, too, did his fair share of this.

Powell writes like an angel--a dark and fearless one--beautifully and with a focus that often falls on sexual politics and race. These linked stories are grippingly told and deeply human, and it is the humanizing aspect of the work that draws readers in most brilliantly. It is certainly what makes the work stay with readers long after they put the book down.

The esteemed writer Naomi Shihab Nye has written that "Powell has an astonishing ability to create characters with swift and haunting power," and one could easily apply the same notion to the landscape he depicts. The United Arab Emirates, in which these linked stories are set, emerges over time as one of the most important characters of all.

This novel reads in the way we might view a riveting movie. An entire world is painted, peopled, and portrayed in what can be read in a single sitting, and we are shown that world in its varied colors, complex history, and multitude of human conflicts. Stoning the Devil is an important novel (it is no surprise that one story, "Kamila's Price," appeared in the "Best American" series) and one that I immediately went back to after finishing it for its language, imagery, and complex human dramas.