Kureishi's father and Penelope Fitzgerald

I am very grateful of Julian Barnes, telling us about Penelope Fitzgerald in this weekend Guardian Review . If it were not because of this article, I would not know this contemporary novelist. More over, it helped me, to a degree, to get over an old wound after reading Hanif Kureishi’s essay on his father. A memoir of a depressing struggle in becoming a writer he never became. Something given – reflection on writing is a valuable source telling us about his personal experience in becoming and being a writer. It is indeed a thoughtful essay, enriched with many sustenance and reward that I even translated it to Persian. However, and admittedly, it can be destroying, shattering and dispiriting to those who are not “there” quite and must struggle to keep their spirit up. This is a subject that I shall return to, when time is a friend.