Picture of author.

About the Author

Wendell Steavenson author of the acclaimed memoir Stories I Stole, has lived in and reported from post-Soviet Georgia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon Her work has appeared in the London Observer, The New Yorker, Time, and other publications. She lives in Paris.
Image credit: www.harpercollins.com

Obras de Wendell Steavenson

Associated Works

Granta 87: Jubilee! The 25th Anniversary Issue (2004) — Contribuinte — 201 cópias
Granta 93: God's Own Countries (2006) — Contribuinte — 135 cópias
The Granta Book of Reportage (Classics of Reportage) (1993) — Contribuinte — 93 cópias

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1970
Sexo
female
Local de nascimento
New York, USA
Locais de residência
UK
Republic of Georgia
Lebanon
Paris, France
Pequena biografia
Wendell Steavenson was born in New York in 1970 and grew up in London. After working for Time magazine, she moved to Georgia, in the Caucasus, in 1998, where she wrote her first book, the acclaimed travelogue, Stories I Stole. Since 2002, she has written for the Telegraph, slate.com, Granta, The New Yorker, and the Financial Times magazine, among others, from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. She now lives in Paris. [from www.harpercollins.com]

Membros

Resenhas

Steavenson's time spent with the family of Iraqi General Kamel Sachet really shows the progression in the life of the country from the early optimism of Saddam's rule to the abuses that followed and the ambivalent complicity of those Baathies in high places. Sachet is shown to be a moral man whose guilt over the role he played in the regime is pushed to the breaking point. The irony is that his sons became involved in the anti-American insurgency - perhaps a twisted attempt to continue their father's tradition of military courage.… (mais)
 
Marcado
jonbrammer | outras 12 resenhas | Jul 1, 2023 |
PARIS METRO reads like a fictionalized memoir. It follows an accomplished foreign correspondent covering the conflict in the Middle East, a role Steavenson herself has played through much of her career. A key success of the novel is her ability to conger from her professional experience a strong sense of what that life is actually like. There is constant motion in search of stories with little grounding other than to colleagues and editors. She depicts those colleagues as committed and cosmopolitan professionals with strong—often cynical—worldviews. Success requires cleverness, luck, connections and especially acceptance of the potential for danger. This lifestyle seems to provide little room for a settled family life in the usual sense. Indeed Steavenson gives us a first person fictional narrative with a deeply conflicted protagonist whose personal life is anything but usual. Instead it seems dark and unsatisfying with few unshakeable core values.

The dichotomies between the professional and personal are apparent everywhere. The narrative depicts sectarian conflicts that lead to lawlessness and violence with few easy answers. Her profession leaves Catherine ("Kit") Kittredge with feelings of “contempt, black humor, (and) cynicism.” She reports on insurgents, fundamentalists, soldiers, and politicians but the most intriguing character in the book seems to be her husband, Ahmed. He is an Iraqi whose father was executed by Saddam. He had a son by a previous wife whom he never divorced before marrying Kit, but expects her to embrace. She does. Steavenson depicts Ahmad as a cipher, not unlike the Middle East in general. He may be a diplomat or a terrorist; he may be a fundamentalist or an atheist; he clearly is adept at prevarication and compartmentalization. He frequently expresses a pragmatic view of the conflict that reveals a person who seems ill suited to support Kit in her struggle with self-doubt. Ahmed tells her things like: “Don’t be fooled by crowds. Crowds are easy to buy,” and “Humanity is a luxury; you need prosperity to have humanity.”

The plot follows Kit from the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan in Paris in 2015. Along the way she reports on the dissolution of Baghdad, the Arab Spring in Lebanon and Syria, and the refugee crisis on the Greek island of Kos. With a deft internal monologue and conversations with minor characters (Zorro the addicted photojournalist, Rousse the ill-fated illustrator, Alexandre and Jean her “godfathers”, and Little Ahmed her stepson) we witness the shaking of Kit’s core beliefs. Throughout, Steavenson is never tempted to offer easy solutions for either Kit or the Middle East.

Despite its considerable strength, PARIS METRO is not without flaws. The key one seems to derive from the very nature of a reporter’s job—to be an unbiased witness. Kit moves from assignment to assignment giving the narrative an erratic feel. Just when the drama seems to build, Kit moves on to something else, leaving a frustrated reader wondering how the last event was resolved. Another problem stems from Steavenson’s overreliance on philosophical discussions among her characters where little is ever resolved. Most of this does not seem to move the story along in meaningful ways. Despite these shortcomings, the novel is a worthy read.
… (mais)
½
 
Marcado
ozzer | 1 outra resenha | Jul 28, 2018 |
Written from the perspective of a journalist who covered the Iraq War and then the refugee crisis in Europe, this book sometimes feels like a novelization of the last 20 years of news. Kitty, a British-American journalist, goes to Iraq in the early 2000s to cover the conflict and meets Ahmed, an Iraqi man who challenges her preconceptions and captures her heart. She marries him and even converts to Islam to make the marriage possible. But Ahmed carried many secrets - including another wife, a son, and the mysterious work that he does. As this book races towards the 2015 Paris attacks, the challenges of truly knowing a person become clear and the questions of identify loom over the narrative.… (mais)
 
Marcado
wagner.sarah35 | 1 outra resenha | May 12, 2018 |
I am having the hardest time thinking of something to say about The Weight of a Mustard Seed. I am just plain stuck. I liked the book, some parts more than others. I thought it was relevant to the times, informative, and thought provoking. I have read a handful of reviews in which this book is described as reading like a novel, but I cannot say that proved true for me. It definitely read like a nonfiction book—and not at all in a bad way. It certainly lends credibility to the author’s research and efforts in putting together and writing this book.
Author and journalist Wendell Steavenson spent many years researching her story, interviewing various sources, reading through documents, and living in the country she wrote about. In part, she wanted to know why: why reputable people like General Kamel Sachet would remain loyal to a government regime that he did not agree with, one that, at times, was oppressive, practiced torture and executed people for believing differently or speaking out, including his own followers and supporters.

Although the author sets out to tell the story of General Kamel Sachet, there are many stories within the novel about individuals, some powerful and some with no power at all, sharing their experiences. The book spans over several years, marking much of Saddam Hussein's reign over Iraq. While the focus of the book is on the negative impact of Saddam Hussein’s rule over Iraq, the author does make mention of some of the positives as well, however briefly.

The people, including those in high positions, had to adapt as best they could to survive, sometimes compromising their own beliefs, whether through denial or looking the other way. They rationalized their actions or lack thereof. The author points out the difference in cultures and beliefs between the West and the Middle East through the words of those she interviews. Wendell Steavenson also uses science to seek answers to her questions, looking into psychological studies conducted in the United States. The scientific results are not all that different from what happened in real life Iraq, demonstrating that man is not so different even countries and cultures apart.

The Weight of a Mustard Seed provides no real new insights into those age old questions, "Why did you go along with what you knew was wrong? Why didn't you speak out when so many of you disagreed? Why didn't you do something to stop it?" However, what the book does offer is insight into a people and country that have been in turmoil for many years. It shows the strength and resilience of individuals who do what they feel they must to survive. Unfortunately, some do turn to extremism as a way to survive, and it really is no wonder considering the life they have known, the constant fear they live in. There are many though who do not go that route, and who instead are trying their best to get by and hoping for a better day, one free of occupation and oppression, one where they can walk down the street without fear.
… (mais)
 
Marcado
LiteraryFeline | outras 12 resenhas | Nov 25, 2017 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
9
Also by
4
Membros
324
Popularidade
#73,085
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Resenhas
21
ISBNs
37
Idiomas
3
Favorito
1

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