I finally got round to reading Huo Da’s ‘The Jade King’ or, in the original Chinese version ‘Funeral of a Muslim’ (穆斯林的葬礼). A best-selling and award-winning novel in China, and based in part on the author’s own experience, it tells the story of three generations of a Muslim […]
I read two interesting books this Summer: George Makdisi’s Rise of Colleges and W. Montgomery Watt’s Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe. Both books contain authoritative accounts about how the scholastic method of inquiry, and most elements of the academic system (but not its organisational system) in the […]
The Wave Review. via The Wave Review.
What precisely is a cliché? And is it really the ‘bad guy of the English language’? Or is that just a vexed question? As even bad guys have their defendants and McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language reminds us that the general dislike of the […]
By Nicholas Ostler Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0007118708 Year: 2005 Pages: 624 Hardback Historical linguist Nicholas Ostler presents herein an in-depth and comprehensive biography of the world’s languages—a story that has been little told; making this book one of a few in this genre (see also ‘Dictionary of Languages’ […]