Community Crisis

Jann M. Contento and Jeffrey Ross, Community College Crisis: The Philip Dolly Affair

A Crisis in Community College Leadership: The Phillip Dolly Affair is literary in development but grounded in “chaotic” community college daily experience. The novel is comic, satiric, quasi-politically correct, edgy, and richly descriptive of community college life, leadership foibles, and cultural themes. This hyperbolic text is entertaining, edifying, and fun. Little community college fiction—comic or otherwise—exists—the authors are fearless in their humorous—and sometimes biting-- analysis of community college culture.... The “stereotype-busting” authors reacquaint readers with the [faded] ideals of the 1960’s social renaissance. While community colleges are currently receiving heightened attention, this novel provides a behind-the-scenes analysis of many “whispered truths,” those simmering but unspoken workplace issues, behaviors, and machinations nearly every worker [Everyman] in America will recognize.

Reem Bassiouney, Professor Hanna.

On the eve of her fortieth birthday Egyptian academic, Professor Hanaa, finds herself alone and unloved. For twenty years she has battled with an impossible love for an unattainable colleague, and has become outcast in a society where family and friends mean everything. Her life is organised into endless routines, and her emotions are hidden behind a facade of stern, but joyless professionalism. The facade begins to crumble, however, when her birthday brings with it the realisation that she is about to turn into an embittered, forty-year-old spinster. Never one to admit defeat, Hanaa determines she will lose her virginity before her birthday, and sets her sights on Khalid, her teaching assistant. An earnest, hardworking and devout young man, Khalid is an unlikely accomplice; however Hanaa's powers of persuasion know no bounds. What ensues is a lively, witty, often sly commentary on gender and power relationships in both academia and the Arab world-a 'campus' novel of a wholly different bent. Belletrisa

Reem Bassiouney’s interview with BBC World about her novel Professor Hanaa

Frank Parkin obituary Sociologist who also wrote campus satires

In 1987 Parkin published a campus novel, The Mind and Body Shop, satirising the corporatisation and commercialisation of academic life. The success of the first novel was not repeated; it was as if the reality had already outstripped the fiction.

The Guardian

Harbach The Art of Fielding

Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

A campus novel that spends more time in the locker room than the library
Chad Harbach’s much anticipated, decade-in-the-making debut doesn’t disappoint. The Art of Fielding is a campus novel, but one that spends more time in the locker room than the library. Henry Skrimshander might look like a scrawny kid from South Dakota, but within months of his arrival at Westish College, he’s known as one of the best players on the varsity baseball team. Recruited for his improbably good arm and virtuosic sense of fielding, it’s soon clear that Henry is meant for the big leagues. But not all dreams come true, and on the field, anybody can choke. As what once appeared to be an inevitably bright future fades, Henry — like his mentor, Mike Schwartz — is forced to rethink his prospects and grapple with a life after college that suddenly looks a lot different than he’d envisioned.

Emusic

Karin Amatmoekrim: Het Gym

Het gym

NRC/Handelsblad: ‘Het gym is een lichtvoetige en geestige roman. Het aangenaam luchtige zit vooral in de heldere, spreektalige zinnen en in de trefzekere dialogen. Als Sandra, op aandringen van haar vriendinnen, auditie doet voor het schooltoneel, omdat dat ‘ab-so-luut onmisbaar’ zou zijn voor haar ontwikkeling, krijgt ze een rol toegewezen in een eigentijdse versie van Faust. Dan roept ze verschrikt uit; ‘Tering, ik ben god.’
Haar grote voorbeeld op school is de leraar Nederlands. Hij maakt geen onderscheid tussen rang of stand en trekt niemand voor. Als hij tegen haar zegt dat ze schrijftalent heeft, voelt ze zich voor het eerst in haar leven machtig

. Amatmoekrim