Lit & Found: Excerpt from Abbas Beydoun’s ‘Frankenstein’s Mirrors’

As a “Lit & Found” to accompany our MIRRORS-themed issue, released earlier this week, we turned up “Gluttony” from Abbas Beydoun’s Frankenstein’s Mirrors, translated by Lily Sadowsky.

Sadowsky writes that:

In Frankenstein’s Mirrors, Abbas Beydoun presents a collection of autobiographical vignettes that reflect—and reflect on—moments both in and out of time. Each chapter captures an experience, however fleeting, as it ripples around the author’s life in often unexpected ways. Though self-contained, the chapters work together to form a more perfect whole, to elucidate unnamed relationships and to paint the portrait not only of a particular man but also of the subjectivity he comes to represent.

In it, Beydoun explores the delights of eating at the edges of language. From the piece:

The invention of a meal, any meal, must be an inspiration—but one that is never wrong. Each time, as if by instinct, we discover something that is right—and provably so. Each day, in fact, brings new proof. How did they think to fry coriander with garlic? Surely, a discovery like that is no less important than the discovery of Earth’s gravitational pull. Our world has been changed ever since. Lunch has become something else. How did they think to mix oil with garlic and tahini? Surely, imagination alone is insufficient. Inspiration has got to be involved: light shot into the heart.

Read it all at The Markaz Review.