Ira Wells: Michael Ignatieff’s nouveau modesty PAGE 7 $6.50 Vol. 25, No. 9 December 2017 Israel’s Religious Awakening Is the world ready for another theocracy in the Middle East? PATRICK MARTIN ALSO IN THIS ISSUE pasha malla The lie of plagiarism sarah wylie krotz Men with boats ramin jahanbegloo & jalal barzanji Forgiveness and revenge PLUS Kid lit’s subterranean genius + Culinary time travel + The hipster bourgeoisie Publications Mail Agreement #40032362. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept., PO Box 8, Station K, Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 New from University of Toronto Press Stumbling Giants Transforming Canada’s Banks for the Information Age by Patricia Meredith and Residential Schools and James L. Darroch Reconciliation Stumbling Giants presents a new vision Canada Confronts its History for the Canadian banking industry and a call to action for all stakeholders to by J.R. 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The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Canadian Index and is distributed by Disticor and Magazines Canada. We acknowledge the financial funding acknowledgements We acknowledge the assistance support of the Government of the OMDC Magazine Fund, of Canada through the an initiative of Ontario Media Canada Periodical Fund of Development Corporation. the Department of Canadian Heritage. an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario December 2017 reviewcanada.ca INTERVIEW A Poetics of Forgiveness Ramin Jahanbegloo in conversation with Jalal Barzanji he political philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo first gained renown in This adoptive home of Canada after his wrongful imprisonment in Iran became a human- rights issue a decade or so ago. Jahanbegloo was arrested in 2006, while visiting family in Tehran, on trumped-up charges of conspiring to over- throw the state. The author of such books as Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (1991), and an alumnus of the Sorbonne and Harvard, he was held in solitary confinement for four months, an ordeal he detailed in his previous book, Time Will Say Nothing: A Philosopher Survives an Iranian Prison. Jahanbegloo is currently professor and vice dean of the law school at Jindal Global University in Delhi, and executive director of the university’s Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace. His newest book consid- ers his experience ten years on, from another per- spective. On Forgiveness & Revenge: Lessons from an Iranian Prison (University of Regina Press) is a wide-ranging reflection on forgiveness through the philosopher’s lens. It’s an apt book for an annus horribilis that has supplied no end of opportunities to exercise forgiveness, patience, and resilience. The Kurdish-Canadian poet Jalal Barzanji has much in common with Jahanbegloo. The author of the poetry collection Trying Again to Stop Time and The Man in the Blue Pyjamas: A Prison Memoir (both University of Alberta Press), he was also unjustly imprisoned (in Iraq); he has spent a lifetime navigating questions of exile and freedom in his writing; and he, too, has had to negotiate moving past great injustice in his life. He and Jahanbegloo spoke via email about confinement, freedom, and the art of forgiving. tors, notably two swords that were given to him by without electricity or water. A school was opened Barzanji: I was very excited when I read in your his own father, which I eventually inherited. I lived there when I was seven years old, and books soon book that your father is Kurdish. Sanandaj is a under two regimes: the second Pahlavi regime and became my obsession. My father would chastise city of art, culture, and literature me whenever I was lagging behind [in Iranian Kurdistan], and I am during the walk to school; he not surprised to know that your Freedom of expression is a reality that would shout, “Hurry up, Jalal! I roots are in that beautiful city. is unappreciated and taken for granted don’t want you to walk through life Unfortunately, it is the destiny of blind like me.” That always stuck Kurdish people to be displaced, in Canada. In the Middle East it is with me. That school—and, soon which results in the loss of lan- after, my entire village—was later guage. But aren’t we lucky to have something we fight for—not a “thin firebombed in 1961. Two days other languages to express our following the bombing, he was feelings and thoughts about peace, paper” but a “thick action.” imprisoned. It would not be the freedom, and beauty? last time my hopes and dreams Jahanbegloo: Beautifully put.