Undying Love, Or, Love Dies

Book excerpt: Memoir. Essay. The latest book from an original writer, thinker and filmmaker whose other books (also available from SPD) have attracted a considerable following. "This, Jalal Toufic's fifth book, can be read as a single aphorism, an aphorism composed of aphorisms. And although it is the shortest of his books to date, it is the greatest. Under love's rubric, themes from Toufic's earlier books reappear - memory, the untimely occurrence, the undead of history and their recurrence in film, the hyperrealities of oblivion, ruination. The book is set in contexts (and particularly that of the Arab World) in which not time but other faster forces are bringing about an end to things.There is, in my opinion, no more subtle or powerful thinker today than Jalal Toufic, and none whose ideas are, in the end, more beautiful" - Lyn Hejinian.