Nine Books About Your Life:
Marream Krollos
Interview by Nicholas Alexander Hayes
In our Nine Books About Your Life series, authors are invited to talk about nine types of books that have had an impact on their lives. Their responses give us a glimpse into their relationships with their books and other people’s books. In this installment, we speak with Marream Krollos, author of the forthcoming Stan (Meekling Press).
First Book – The first book I remember making me understand why books are books, their significance to humanity, was Johnny Got His Gun, by Trumbo. It is one of the few works of art, in my opinion, which truly explains the consequences of war; though it is through the mind of one soldier, who is only a torso, and so only has a mind.
Johnny Got His Gun: A Novel
Dalton Trumbo
Bantam
ISBN: 978-0553274325
Most Cherished Book – I cherish Beer in the Snooker Club, by Ghali. I am Coptic, not many of Coptic Egyptians are fiction writers in English. Ghali is one of the few I have read. He took his own life decades ago, I like to hold on to the physical book.
Beer in the Snooker Club
Waguih Ghali
Vintage International
ISBN: 978-0804170741
Most Perplexing Book – I am perplexed by why books with more “traditional” narrative can take so much out of me. I understand genre, romance or mystery, the structure, and satisfaction in the end. But I do find it difficult to focus reading traditional storytelling in narrative. I think this day and age, because of my being inundated with all the other forms of storytelling so readily available through technology…Straight narrative in fiction has become more difficult for me.
Life-changing Book – Night by Wiesel. I realized there is no “fiction” stranger, more horrifying, more unbearable…there is nothing we can imagine… more anything than truth.
Night
Elie Wiesel
Hill and Wang
ISBN: 978-0374500016
Most Underrated Book – Never Come Morning by Algren. It is about more than the city of Chicago.
Never Come Morning
Nelson Algren
Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 978-1644210444
A Surprising Book – I really relate to the voice in Journey to the End of the Night, by Celine. It surprises me because the author’s voice is so close to the narrators, who was anti-Semitic.
Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
New Directions
ISBN: 978-0811216548
Your Most Recent Book – I just published Stan with Meekling press. The voice is taping herself so she can hear what she sounds like to Stan, to understand why he won’t have her. It devolves from there. I wrote Stan at a point where I was beleaguered by certain thoughts. The book worked like a tattoo that put the images/words outside of my mind and into physical form.
Stan
Marream Krollos
Meekling Press
ISBN: 978-1950987030
Your Next Book – I am working on a book called Fishflies: The Men of the Riverhouse. It is the first autofiction/nonfiction project I have attempted. It takes place in my apartment building, The Riverhouse, the years after I got deported from Saudi Arabia.
Plug a Book – Hend and the Soldier, by Albeshr. Saudi writers aren’t often read in Saudi Arabia, especially women writers. They should be read.
Hend and the Soldier
Badriah Albeshr
Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
ISBN: 978-1477313060
About Marream Krollos
Marream Krollos currently lives in Detroit.
About the Interviewer
Nicholas Alexander Hayes (Review Editor) lives in Chicago, IL. He is the author of NIV: 39 & 27 and Between. He has an MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he is currently completing an MA in Sociology at DePaul University. He writes about a wide range of topics including ’60s gay pulp fiction, the Miss Rheingold beauty competition, depictions of masculinity on Tumblr, and whatever piece of pop cultural detritus catches his eye at the moment.