There was this very deliberate move to just overlay an American reality in Iraq. I've never actually seen the map, but apparently Americans thought the names of places were just too complicated so they got decent maps of Baghdad and… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
In the Green Zone in Iraq you have your radio, you have your food, you have your own electricity, your own toilets. Everything is… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
There are certainly times in history where power associates itself closely with fields that we would call the humanities, like rulers surrounding themselves with… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
A high-ranking Syrian official in DC laughed when he heard I was reading Michel Aflaq and writing this book. He said, "Let me tell… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Noir is where the clarity of moral divisions break down, the black and whites turn into grays. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
In translation studies we talk about domestication - translation styles that make something familiar - or estrangement - translation styles that make something radically… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
You always have regime-friendly poets like Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, whose career basically spans the twentieth century. He's an anti-imperialist, friendly with the Communists, and… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Take Ezra Pound's translations of poetry from Chinese. He doesn't really know Chinese, and the very strange results that he comes up with aren't… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Michel Aflaq - is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Each discipline has the capacity to be interested in politics, and each would ask different questions of what politics is, what constitutes power, how… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
The more I've reflected on that and asked Iraqi friends, the more I realize that the corruption in Iraq has nothing to do with… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
