Monthly Flanor

Tue 8 Sep from 20:00 till 21:30

Flanor is an independent literary student association from Groningen with about 200 members, coming from almost all fields of study. Flanor organizes writer evenings and lectures all year round.

These evenings are open to everyone. In addition, Flanor has various reading groups and other enjoyable activities. Feel free to drop by, everyone is warmly welcome!

A cup of tea, a comfortable chair, and a good book. The word 'literary' has many meanings within Flanor. Fantasy books, coming-of-age stories, graphic novels, but also high-quality Dutch literature or obscure literature from faraway places, it is all read within Flanor. Don't be discouraged by page counts or authors with long names. Reading is for everyone!

For those who can't get enough of reading and writing, Flanor invites a speaker every month. So far, we have welcomed authors such as Buddy Wakefield, Jeff Vandermeer, Jan Terlouw, Ronald Giphart, Raoul de Jong, Remco Campert, Hanna Bervoets, Jacques Vriens, Connie Palmen, John Flanagan, and many others.

Tuesday 8 September | Yael van der Wouden

Gretchen Head is a professor of Arabic literature and will discuss Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in relation to Khomeini, the fatwa, and the possibility of questioning Islam in literary texts.

On February 14, 1989, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the death of British author Salman Rushdie and his publishers following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses (1988). As a result, his Japanese translator was murdered, his Italian translator and Norwegian publisher barely survived attempts on their lives, and Rushdie himself lived in hiding under police protection for ten years.

This lecture will, with a careful analysis of the novel and the broader literary context, explore how Iran, through the condemnation of Rushdie's novel and the resulting global crisis, effectively repositioned the boundaries of literary kufr (disbelief or blasphemy) in the Islamic world. This has radically changed the boundaries of freedom of expression and literary discourse, from the Middle East/North Africa to South and Southeast Asia.

This lecture will be in English.