It was said of the former British prime minister John Major, an otherwise somewhat dull and colourless man, that his great pleasure each night was retiring to bed with a well-thumbed Trollope. In these days of the Amazon Kindle - and its potential nemesis, we are told, the new Apple iPad - it is hard to see how Mr Major could indulge his passion for the great Victorian novelist and chronicler of Barsetshire.
Having done its calculations at the end of last year's festive gift-buying season, Amazon announced that e-books had outsold paper ones for the first time. The company took great pleasure in this news, and it's not hard to work out why. First, pinging an e-book down the wire - a process in which the purchaser does what little work is required - is a lot less expensive than paying staff to parcel up and dispatch the printed version. Second, when you download an e-book from Amazon you're not actually "buying" anything; you're merely leasing the right to read it. The Kindle software comes with DRM (digital rights management) so restrictive that the small print reads like an employment contract with the CIA.
Supporters of the iPad point out that its book-reading software is open source, without DRM, and in this they are correct; but they also miss the point. The fundamental misconception undermining the e-book is the assumption that a book is no more than words. This is why those who share my distaste for the e-book reader and all its works are dismissed as Luddites. The e-book, the argument goes, is part of a natural progression from Cicero's faithful scribe Tiro with his wax tablet and stylus, via Shakespeare with his parchment, quill and ink; just as recorded music has moved from Edison's phonograph cylinders, to shellac discs, to vinyl albums, to CDs and now to MP3 downloads. The message matters, not the medium.
But a good book is so much more than that. It is an artefact, something you hold and turn over in your hands, marvelling at the wonder of it. And there is a ritual. First you read the back cover, with its brief, one-sentence reviews of the author's previous work. Then you read the inside back cover, a short biography of the author. Then the tension mounts as you turn to the inside front cover, with its synopsis of the plot. An added bonus may be a page of judiciously chosen quotations from classic works, poems or even songs, which should give you a flavour of what is to come. These are the essential hors d'oeuvres, the amuse-bouche, before you get to the meat.
The magic and romance of a good book are wonderfully evoked in two great novels by the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind, and its prequel, The Angel's Game. While the characters are rich and complex, the true heroes are not people, but two places in the narrow, cobblestoned, gaslit streets behind Las Ramblas in early 20th-century Barcelona: the Sempere & Sons bookshop and the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
In the former, countless generations of the Sempere family have been guardians of the treasury of literature, living in penury because they would rather give a good book away than deny it to a hungry reader with no money. In the latter, behind an imposing oak door lies a massive labyrinth of tunnels lined with shelves containing untold millions of neglected books; a chosen few people judged worthy of the honour are invited to select one, which they must then guard and keep safe for the rest of their lives.
Zafon's motif is that a book is a repository for the dreams and soul of its author, and of everyone who reads it. That doesn't work with a Kindle; it doesn't have a soul. But there is more at stake here than just magic and romance. Enthusiasts of the e-book argue that it will democratise the world of literature and cleanse it of elitism. If by this they mean what I fear they mean, then I am happy to remain an elitist. Currently only a few people possess the mixture of wealth, egotistic self-regard and literary incompetence that makes vanity publishing both necessary and possible. When every hitherto mute, inglorious Wolfe or De Lillo is able to publish his Great American Novel with the click of a mouse, the consequences will be too awful to contemplate.
If you doubt this, take a trip into the blogosphere, where anarchy rules. There are gems there, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find these specks of sense in a vast ocean of inanity. It has given birth to the "citizen journalist", as inherently preposterous a concept as the citizen brain surgeon, citizen flat-race jockey or citizen astronaut. The result is that genuine quality journalism has been devalued to the extent that it is in grave peril, both online and in print.
Literature, like journalism, is a profession; it must be learnt, it must be practised and it must be remunerated. More than 250 years ago the wise Dr Johnson observed: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." The old boy wasn't wrong. In our world as in his, in literature as in journalism, you get what you pay for. And if you pay nothing, you get - well, work it out for yourself. randerson@thenational.ae
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Bert van Marwijk factfile
Born: May 19 1952
Place of birth: Deventer, Netherlands
Playing position: Midfielder
Teams managed:
1998-2000 Fortuna Sittard
2000-2004 Feyenoord
2004-2006 Borussia Dortmund
2007-2008 Feyenoord
2008-2012 Netherlands
2013-2014 Hamburg
2015-2017 Saudi Arabia
2018 Australia
Major honours (manager):
2001/02 Uefa Cup, Feyenoord
2007/08 KNVB Cup, Feyenoord
World Cup runner-up, Netherlands
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
RECORD%20BREAKER
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The%20stats%20and%20facts
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MORE ON TURKEY'S SYRIA OFFENCE
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
SPECS
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EEngine%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%202-litre%20direct%20injection%20turbo%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETransmission%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%207-speed%20automatic%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPower%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%20261hp%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETorque%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%20400Nm%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%20From%20Dh134%2C999%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Bayern Munich v Real Madrid
When: April 25, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Allianz Arena, Munich
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 1, Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League final:
Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
Frida%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ECarla%20Gutierrez%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Frida%20Kahlo%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Banned items
Dubai Police has also issued a list of banned items at the ground on Sunday. These include:
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Political flags or banners
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Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5