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Summary: staircase of 1K steps: well....
Review: staircase of 1K steps: well, what can i say about this book? it was okay. perhaps its me, but i found the story a bit hard to follow (maybe from the cast of characters constantly being introduced without any background explanation of who they are). i also found my mind wandering quite a bit throughout the book. on the other hand, i enjoyed reading about an middle east culture and the storyline was good (once i got the idea where the story was going). overall, staircase is okay.
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Summary: An InterReview by Randy
Review: [Note: Randy Garsee is a broadcast journalist in Tucson, Arizona and frequently interviews authors]Author Hamilton Discusses September 11th Masha Hamilton spent five years in the Middle East as a reporter for the Associated Press. Although she covered terrorist attacks, suicidal bombers and the on-going conflicts there, her first novel is about the culture of Palestinian Muslims before the 1967 War with Israel.
Her experience gives Hamilton some insight into the tragic events in New York and Washington, D.C.
"We're all trying to go forward from September 11th as individuals and we're going to find many different paths to do that," says Hamilton. "But one of the ways I think we do that are the stories that we share with one another."
The story Hamilton is sharing is also her first novel, "Staircase of a Thousand Steps." She explains, "This book shares the stories of some Palestinian Muslims. I think that is a way of connecting, which is so important at this kind of time."
Hamilton spent five years in the 1980's reporting out of the Associated Press' Jerusalem bureau. She spent another five years in Moscow reporting on the break-up of the former Soviet Union.
Having personally observed the culture and lives of Palestinian Muslims, Hamilton decided to put their story in fiction form. "Approaching this fictionally allows you to find greater truths, I think, that you can't find strictly through journalism. And in fiction you have a right to go there and try to find the inner truths and, I think, sometimes the greater truths through that."
One week after the terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hamilton and a group of Tucson writers e-mailed a letter to their friends, asking those who agree to forward it to the President or Congress. Hamilton favors a U.S. military response to the terrorism, but is concerned about the President's resolve to punish all countries that harbor terrorists.
"If we answer evil with evil, that may not be something we want to do as a country," Hamilton says.
The letter calls for a commission made up of quote "our best minds, intellectuals, spiritual leaders, artists and philosophers, women, Arab-Americans and other minorities." The commission's job would be to suggest creative and precise U.S. responses to the attacks.
"These terrorists are absolutely fanatics, no question. But they also have reasons for hating the United States. We don't want to create new terrorists and fuel new reasons for hating the United States by our response to this."
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