Poet Laureate

In the U.S. was significantly increased the number of official city poets, says Ely Sakhai. In recent months, seven U.S. cities (from Houston and Los Angeles all the way to a small Fresno) have appointed an official city poet. Now a total of 35 major cities (and 6 states) have its official poets. The so-called [...]

Ely Sakhai - Poet Laureate Ely Sakhai - Poet Laureate

The Radleys – A Novel By Matt Haig

Dr. Peter Radley with his wife Helen and the two children took refuge from the busy city of London to a provincial town called Bishopthorpe, where everyone lives a seemingly ordinary life, starts Ely Sakhai. Radleys are eminent members of their exclusive community and live according the rules of The Manual of abstainers (whose basic [...]

Ely Sakhai - The Radleys - A Novel By Matt Haig Ely Sakhai - The Radleys - A Novel By Matt Haig

The Nostalgia Factory – Memory, time and ageing

Douwe Draaisma is distinguished Dutch professor of psychology and the author of “Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older” ( Published on December 22, 2008). He has written an excellent book “The Nostalgia Factory” where he is connecting the knowledge and the facts from the fields of psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and literature says Ely Sakhai. In this book [...]

Ely Sakhai - The Nostalgia Factory - Memory, time and ageing Ely Sakhai - The Nostalgia Factory - Memory, time and ageing

Advice for young writers

I think it was the American writer Jonathan Franzen who said that a first thing writer has to do before starts to write is turn off the internet. I could check on internet whether it is true or my memory deceives me, but in the context of this text, it would not make much sense, [...]

Ely Sakhai - Advice for young writers Ely Sakhai - Advice for young writers

The twin – above is quietly

Twins Henk and Helmer, came always in that order; Helmer was older, but Henk was faster, starts Ely Sakhai. All the time they were inseparable until Henk met Riet, and until Rilet’s car, together with her tumbled into the lake. On the day of his brother’s death, Helmer, by his father’s demand left his literature [...]

Ely Sakhai - The Twin Ely Sakhai - The Twin
Ely Sakhai - Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

May 15th, 2013 ely sakhai

In the U.S. was significantly increased the number of official city poets, says Ely Sakhai.

In recent months, seven U.S. cities (from Houston and Los Angeles all the way to a small Fresno) have appointed an official city poet. Now a total of 35 major cities (and 6 states) have its official poets.

The so-called Poet Laureate is paid to sung urban spaces and highlight local virtues. The mayor of Fresno poetically noted that these poets are helping the city to get better terms, and that they “manage to capture the essence of our community, connect us to the community and introduce our community to the outside world”.

However, it is not entirely clear why the sudden increase in the number of official poet took place at this very moment. It is still questionable whether it is about the great importance of poetry in the U.S. or is it an attempt of disposal of authors who have graduated from one of the many studies in creative writing. Or, perhaps, on both, says Mr. Sakhai.

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Ely Sakhai - The Radleys - A Novel By Matt Haig

The Radleys – A Novel By Matt Haig

April 18th, 2013 ely sakhai

Dr. Peter Radley with his wife Helen and the two children took refuge from the busy city of London to a provincial town called Bishopthorpe, where everyone lives a seemingly ordinary life, starts Ely Sakhai. Radleys are eminent members of their exclusive community and live according the rules of The Manual of abstainers (whose basic instruction says: Behave like a normal human being). But this couple has a little secret, which they have not even told to their fifteen year old daughter or her seventeen year old son Rowan that they are in fact vampires.

In fact, all the “normal” vampires live among ordinary people as vegetarians, and others have a secret deal with the British government on a quiet tolerance as long as their thirst for blood is satisfied by removing undesirable people from the face of earth. But among them also exist and vampires that choose their victims neglecting the law and agreement.

Peter has long suspected that his brother Will might be one of those and because of that tries to stay away from any encounter with him. But when an unwanted incident awakens the vampire blood in Clare, it seems that Radleys have no other choice but to ask Will for help. Complications that follow after this will make this, at the beginning witty novel, become a suspense thriller in which two young rapidly growing Radleys become a central theme of the struggle between good and evil, says Ely Sakhai.

Matt Haig has offered all the vampire literature fans an entirely original work of this genre, with references to vampire pop culture and thoughtful insights into the nature of morality and identity of young adults.

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Ely Sakhai - The Nostalgia Factory - Memory, time and ageing

The Nostalgia Factory – Memory, time and ageing

April 5th, 2013 ely sakhai

Douwe Draaisma is distinguished Dutch professor of psychology and the author of “Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older” ( Published on December 22, 2008). He has written an excellent book “The Nostalgia Factory” where he is connecting the knowledge and the facts from the fields of psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and literature says Ely Sakhai. In this book is written that the wisdom is coming with the ages, but before, there is forgetfulness. And because of that, people are using everything possible to keep their fresh memories. There are exercise for the brain, vitamin products etc.

However, there are a lot of questions whether the memory is going to rehearse and is the forgetfulness “hand in hand” with the age. Going in the tiniest details of the established understanding of the brain, Draaisma is standing for ageing memory and emotionally is breaking down the true story about the things that are passing.

Draaisma, on very subtly, convincingly and poignant way is describing the age and its ills. He is talking about the elusiveness of memory, forgetfulness and of nostalgia for a world that still is existing only in the memories. But he is also telling the tale of the unexpected pleasures that gives the ageing memory as the so-called effect of reminiscence when the childhood memories are appearing more intense than before. The section which is related with the autobiographical memory is truly fascinating because it is revealing that every human being in his own recollections apparatus has an ‘autobiography acts’ from the early age and as professor Sakhai is saying this form of remembering can be re-evoked on the easy or the hard way.

“The Nostalgia Factory” is funny, exciting and educational book where the author is explaining that the time is affecting to the memory but memory is also affecting to the time.

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Ely Sakhai - Advice for young writers

Advice for young writers

March 29th, 2013 ely sakhai

I think it was the American writer Jonathan Franzen who said that a first thing writer has to do before starts to write is turn off the internet. I could check on internet whether it is true or my memory deceives me, but in the context of this text, it would not make much sense, says Ely Sakhai.

Although it would be quite pretentious and pointless to write text on the importance of the Internet for literature today, the books on this subject could fill the Trinity College Library, we can at least ask how much the Internet is useful when it comes to advices about how writers should write.

When talking about literary genres, types, shapes and smaller genres theorists rarely give autonomy to the kind of texts in which writers, mostly older and more successful writers, which is quite logical, give advice to younger authors. Texts of this type are usually stuffed in various drawers, depending, of course, from the form and manner in which the author presents his advice. These texts for example, can be part of a writer’s poetic work, which was quite often from 16th and by the end of the 19th century, can be sorted in his ‘journalism’ or the writer’s correspondence, in the case of epistolary form, which was not that rare in certain literary epochs. Therefore, the person who takes pleasure in reading this type of articles were often pleasantly surprised when they accidentally came across to ‘advice for young writers’ in writers’ works. Some of these texts are part of the work of great writers, like Diderot, or Rilke and sometimes the reader finds them randomly and treats them as a literary treasure.

It goes without saying that today things are no longer like in those times. Just type in the search engine something like “advice to writers” or something similar, and you’ll get thousands and thousands of tips from every living and non-living person who wrote anything in this context. The Internet as a phenomenon has brought a major change in terms of advising writers how to how to access literary texts, end Ely Sakhai.

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Ely Sakhai - Samosanacije

Samosanacije

March 22nd, 2013 ely sakhai

Samosanacija by Suzana Matic is a narcissistic and therapeutic review about Tessa K, says Ely Sakhai. It is her first book and it is a blog in a gross version that she created continually, not only in the nights and insomnia. This book is determining her poetics and genre.

You cannot determine what kind of posts is writing Suzana, says Eli Sakhai. All her posts are something between poetry and prose. The author of this book is admitting that the sleeping for her is a ‘power…  some amazing skill… “. Her insomnia is precisely, “entre chien et loup” (between dog and wolf). This expression is indicating of the time of the day just before the dark falls down, when the light is so low that it is impossible to distinguish a wolf from a dog.

The texts from Samosanacija are diary created. Actually they are conversations with herself and they are showing a whole luxurious and nuanced personal mythology, a planet that is not holding the Atlas than the heart, and which is turning by the words and emotions. The author’s internal lyrically dialogues were amplified and unmistakably in a quiet and gallantly striving towards circumventing paradoxical point. She is using a penchant narrative which pulls back from the time of the Greek myths.

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Ely Sakhai - The Twin

The twin – above is quietly

March 7th, 2013 ely sakhai

Twins Henk and Helmer, came always in that order; Helmer was older, but Henk was faster, starts Ely Sakhai. All the time they were inseparable until Henk met Riet, and until Rilet’s car, together with her tumbled into the lake.

On the day of his brother’s death, Helmer, by his father’s demand left his literature studies and went to a small family farm where began to live a quite life – a life that was not meant for him.

But can a man get back to the life that was once his, but slipped away through his fingers?

The action take us some thirty-five years later when Helmer moves his elderly father to a room on the top floor, and with a tangle of bitterness, anguish and reproach things start to unravel when once again Helmer is brought to Van Wonderen’s home by Riet and Henk – her eighteen-year old son.

The Twin is Gerbrand Bakker’s ode to the Dutch landscape, plains and the endless sky above it. It is a novel whose seductive tension rests on a seemingly simple language, narrative voice and fascination from the indestructible desire for fulfillment, adds Ely Sakahi.

“Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin is one of those rare works that everyone should read” – (The Irish Times)

“This is a quiet book, with demurred tones and fine, self-underestimating humor. Bakker’s characters are real – equally lost and confused, and strongly silent” – (Times Literary Supplement)

“A strange, unforgettable novel“- (The Guardian)

“Life, death, loneliness, lost dreams – we have heard that story so many times, but Bakker managed to narrate it in such fresh way like it was just made up. The dialogues are like sparks in a gloomy gray landscape” – (Die Zeit)

“A brilliant and extremely subtle novel” – (The Independent)

“The secret of Bakker’s book lies in its fine tuning on each of its parts, and in the perfect rhythm of the story” – (The New York Review of Books)

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Ely Sakhai - Matthew Quirk’s 500

500

February 20th, 2013 ely sakhai

This explosive novel about an individual person who opposes a powerful establishment, has entered the finals of Edgars Award best debut novel, says Ely Sakhai.

When James Patterson comments on the novel 500 as “a company who is moving to Washington, but with a lot more action”, the statement is much more than a compliment. If we recall that John Grisham’s first major hit was also the best-selling book of the nineties, it is logical to conclude that because of Matthew Quirk’s book, 500, one could cancel all agreements and passionately immerse in the intriguing story about an individual who tries to oppose a powerful establishment.

After acquiring his law degree at Harvard University, Mike Ford got his dream job at Davies Group, Washington’s most powerful consulting firm. At the moment of speaking he has a gun pointed at his head while is haunted by the two most dangerous men in the world. In order to get himself out of that mess, he starts doing things he once swore will no longer do: to lie, cheat, steal, and this time maybe even kill.

Mike grew up in a world of small crooks and he learned the lessons very well from his own father. He struggled to earn a success in his study of law, which should have enabled him a ticket out of that harsh world. Being a young rising star in the Davies Group, he found himself face to face with an elite group of 500 men and women who actually run Washington and the whole world. But, as he soon realizes, trading with influence is something he is familiar with, and even with a pedigree, cheating is cheating.

Combining elements of political intrigue and thrilling action, 500 is an interesting novel about an individual who opposed the powerful establishment. In Mike Ford character, readers will discover a new hero who learns that when someone flies high he will surely fall low.

This book has entered the finals for Edgars Award, and the top award is awarded to crime novels and thrillers, finishes Ely Sakhai.

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Ely Sakhai - I don't

I don’t

February 14th, 2013 ely sakhai

For more than ten thousand years, the marriage and the whole idea of ​​marriage are the basis of society. In her book, Susan Squire reveals the turbulent history with many implications of our most fundamental institution, says Ely Sakhai.

Starting with the discovery, long before there was any record of the time, that sex leads to conception and paternity (and thus automatically to partnership), and consequently leading us to emergence of the modern marriage from love, the author reveals many ways of men and women pairings and shows exactly how their union influenced history, society, politics, religion, and the very idea of ​​a household.

From Adam and Eve, to the Renaissance and beyond, Squire will explain the history and importance of marriage. We learn that men of Athens had hetaeras (courtesans) to entertain them, concubines for their everyday needs and their wives who bore legitimate children to them. Women from Rome, on the other hand, learned how to use their power to influence men’s ruling in the society.

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Ely Sakhai - The State in the Third Millennium

The State in the Third Millennium

February 7th, 2013 ely sakhai

Has the famous Kennedy quote flipped itself around? – Ely Sakhai

How should the state of the third millennium look like is the question which this book deals with. Author is the well known Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, the head of state, which is more than two decades at the top of the constitutional monarchy. Prince Hans-Adam observes the state from several vantage points: as a monarch, as a businessman active in multiple continents, and as a historian who has thoroughly researched the impact of military technology, transport links and economic functioning of the state.

The book “The State in the Third Millennium” analyzes the forces that shape the destiny and the position of mankind in the past and especially in the future. Here Prince Hans-Adam II is developing strategies how is able in the third millennium everywhere in the world to make a democratic constitutional states. In addition the Prince presents interesting and stylish concept which states that citizens should not serve the country, but – contrary to Kennedy’s famous dictum – that the state should become an effective enterprise services to its citizens.

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Ely Sakhai - European spirit

European spirit – Essays on the far extremes of modern times

January 30th, 2013 ely sakhai

This book builds on Viktor’s Zmegac previous big hits  – SMS Essays and Philosopher Plays Football, published in a same edition: distinctive with its neatly permeated essayistic for along with a casual tone of storytelling, free from professorial teaching, even when talking about very serious subjects – says Ely Sakhai.

The basic thesis of Zmegac is that the modern era of world’s history is marked with far extremes. On one hand, today’s technological revolution is based on the strong progress of science and rationalist philosophy, and on the other hand the social life, every day is confronted with strong manifestations of irrationalism. And sometimes we even come across with the utter barbarism that uses superior technology products.

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Ely Sakhai - Catching Fire

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

January 24th, 2013 ely sakhai

In modern society the actual act of cooking has stepped away from its original idea, says Ely Sakhai, our need to feed in order to survive. Today, cooking is more popular than ever. We like to watch how others operate around the stove, enjoy the new flavors or try some new recipes. Cooking has become, quite simply, joie de vivre. Moreover, I could say that the act of cooking found its ways in some serious science, and one of the most interesting examples is this book which with an explosive courage brings new evolutionary hypothesis.

In contrary to the beliefs of those who swear in the healing effects of diets based on raw foods, this fascinating book tells that cooking takes center part in the biological and social evolution of humanity. Biologist and anthropologist, Richard Wrangham states that the crucial period in human development started some 1.8 million years ago, when our ancestors discovered fire and started cooking.

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Ely Sakhai - Nine Lives

Nine Lives

January 16th, 2013 ely sakhai

As Ely Sakhai says, this book came as a result of the many years William Dalrymple spent while researching and writing about India.

In his book, Dalrymple summarizes some twenty five years of research and writing about India and its religious traditions, and presents some Indian Canterbury stories that introduce us with humans in a different way while take us deep into the worlds which we find difficult to imagine they exist:

- Buddhist priest lays down his arms in order to counter China’s invasion of Tibet and spend the rest of his life atoning his past violence by printing the best prayer flags which could be found throughout India.

- A Jain nun starts to doubt her own ability to uplift herself above the earthly world, while her best friend is dying of hunger.

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Ely Sakhai - Why Love Hurts

Why love hurts

January 11th, 2013 ely sakhai

Love hurts – that’s been known for always, says Ely Sakhai. Men have fought wars in the name of love, women locked themselves into monasteries, poets suffered, and the musicians were willing to do everything for love. But scientists believe that love never hurt more than it is today.

If you have also experienced the agony of intimate relationships, and wonder why love hurts, Eva Illouz can answer many of your confusing love questions.

In this sociological study, one of the leading intellectuals of our time says that pain from lost love is not only as a result of our wounded psyche. On the contrary, she locates the cause of this pain in Hollywood, capitalism and the Internet that have caused utter chaos in our love lives, and we turned ourselves into love consumers. Constantly pushing our autonomy and individualism towards the pedestal, slowly we become compulsive buyers who constantly make a comparison between the demand and supply, and look for a better choice in the market of love. Why love hurts, as an emotional atlas of modern love, offers a way out of that vicious circle of pain and tries to redefine the values ​​of love.

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Ely Sakhai - IMDB

Movie List

January 8th, 2013 ely sakhai

Check Ely Sakhai movie list and feel free to leave a comment.

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Ely Sakhai - Ja, tata iz Irske

Ja, tata iz Irske

January 3rd, 2013 ely sakhai

Paul O’Grady comes from a culture that is not that different from ours, where men are reluctant to talk about personal matters, begins Ely Sakhai.

After I read a few pages of this book, I thought, “My God! I wish I read this forty years ago, at the time when my son was born!” If I had read it, I would have felt less lonely and a bit more confident knowing what I know now. This book is a precious gift to all young fathers who, although surrounded by beautiful, good-hearted women, mothers and grandmothers, still feel the loneliness of a beginner. We all know the saying: “It takes two to play”, so this book also pays attention on the importance of women influence for a man who wants to be a different father.

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Ely Sakhai - Quattrocento

Quattrocento – Historical novel about the Medici and conspiracy of Pazzi’s

December 26th, 2012 ely sakhai

The story follows two actions that are taking place in the same city, with a gap of 500 years, starts Ely Sakhai. In Florence, in the 15th century, at the end of Quattrocento – Italian cultural and artistic movement that said farewell to Middle Ages and welcomed Renaissance, we will find a fierce political and religious conspiracy that aims to dethrone Lorenzo the Magnificent.

In Florence, in the 21st century, however, we follow a young, courageous student who is working on a doctoral dissertation on the artist’s dark past, Pierpaolo Masony. The two stories will connect on a picture, and Masony, painting it, will discover who the true originator of the conspiracy of Pazzi was, and the young student, Ana Sotomayor, with the help of the charismatic professor, will uncover the symbolic of the picture and so put her life in jeopardy.   

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Ely Sakhai - Dreadful Children

Dreadful Children

December 19th, 2012 ely sakhai

In his short novel from 1929, begins Ely Sakhai, Cocteau summarizes all his favorite themes and obsessions – adolescent age, the fascination with angelic, incest, death, fantastic and amazing, the stage of closed space, a mirror, a transcendence, a ceremonial atmosphere, isolation, knowledge of the secret of another world – and continues to penetrate all genre boundaries, so that the work balances between a novel, a story and a fairy tale in a kind of novelistic poetry.

It was written in just a month, some say in only 17 days, during drug addiction treatment for which Cocteau reached shaken from the death of a close friend, this work combines personal despair and hopelessness with identical state of mind as the time between the wars.

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Ely Sakhai - Too much happiness

Too much happiness

December 13th, 2012 ely sakhai

“If I loved you, I would have written differently”. It was written to Sophia Kovalevsky, a 19th-century Russian mathematician and novelist – begins Ely Sakhai. In love, of course, there is no persuasion, no compulsion, no rationalization, no buttons that could be pressed to fall in love with someone. Consequently, love has nothing to do with luck because it happens or it does not happen. This fate – that love does not happen – hits Sophia, who was constantly failing to be loved by a charming and pompous guy – Maksim Maksimovich Kovalevsky. She was successful, and her lover was suffering from too much pride and not enough love.

This book is composed of 10 different stories that have in common only the lack of happiness.

In the story “Belletristic” Joyce hoped that once she meant something to somebody, once in a difficult times of breaking the marriage, but then discovers that memories, real people and tangible emotions are sometimes just a training ground for the story, so the loss, becomes even more difficult, because the old wound opens again. 

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Ely Sakhai - The Fantastic Flying Books

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

December 5th, 2012 ely sakhai

Mr. Morris is sitting in his green chair, on the narrow terrace of his building and reading a book – That is how Ely Sakhai begins his story telling. There are many books to read. From his sides rise towers of blue, red, green and brown books. Books of all possible colors. Actually, his entire life is a book that he is, page by page, writing neatly. And then, suddenly a strong wind starts to blow and carries away all his books, and everything becomes grey. But one book survives – his book of life, in which there are no more letters, so he has to write it all over again.

The first colors in this sad, gray landscape appeared when a flock of flying books carrying a wonderful lady flew across the sky. The lady worried about Morris, send one of the flying books, decorated with the oval Humpty Dumpty, to Lessmore for help, and took him to a magical library where other flying books were waiting impatiently. So Mr. Morris will become a librarian with a special assignment – to prepare for books breakfast from letters every morning, dress them in wrappers, and to heal and repair old books.

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Secrets of the desert

Secret of the Desert

November 28th, 2012 ely sakhai

A story of Zena and Wellsted that warms you in cold days – says Ely Sakhai.

The beginning of the book is full of characters and events, and therefore may be difficult to read, but later, persistence pays off, because after the initial pain, few interesting stories follow that are connected and form two main – Zena’s and Wellsted’s. The events take place back in 1883, at a time when Great Britain abolished slavery, and in the time of the big trading battles between the British and the French. For the purposes of cooperation with Arabs, two Britons embark on a journey, south of Mecca, where the entire area is a desert…

In this period Zena’s life is changing. She is a beautiful young African woman whose village is occupied by the slavers that take her away as the best catch. Perhaps because of her youth, or because of the character, she is not left to apathy, but sees the positive side. “The thought of seeing the world attracts her – places that has already heard of, but never visited”. 

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