BOOK LAUNCH
Best Practices: Habib William Kherbek and friends
Tuesday, October 26, 20216:30pm-9:00pm
Burley Fisher Books, 400 Kingsland Road London E8 4AA
Readings by: Faith Amurao, Daniel Fuller, Afsaneh Grey, Sam Fisher, Aurelia Guo, William Kherbek
Opening Performance by Jack Catling
This coming Tuesday evening Burley Fisher will host the launch of Habib William Kherbek’s new novel, Best Practices, published by Moist Books. To mark the publication of Kherbek’s novel, a group of emerging and established writers will present readings, and the performance artist Jack Catling will open proceedings with a specially commissioned new performance.
BOOK REVIEW
Best Practices is the latest novel by the increasingly renowned author, musician and multidisciplinary artist Habib William Kherbek. Best Practices is best summarised as a polemic that examines the failings, malicious undercurrents and potential political disasters of western intervention in Africa. The novel is set in the country Z that lives under the control of a ferocious dictator. The reader follows the shocking failure of a marketing guru turned NGO worker, Graham Price, whose work in the country threatens to cause more harm than good.
One of the true expertises of Kherbek’s writing is the skill of adopting the colloquial flow of various types of people in the U.K . This is best exemplified in his earlier work ‘Ecology of Secrets’ where he confronts an aggressive cell of the metropolitan police who scheme to infiltrate climate activist groups by forming (sometimes romantic) relationships with their members. In Best Practices, Kherbek builds on this again with a more subtle yet equally disturbing character Graham Price. Price is a happy-go-lucky ‘ethical entrepreneur’ who recounts his blockbuster success of various fundraisers at the beginning of the novel. Hell bent on his own achievements, Price continually mistakes his actions and campaigns to be for the good of others. Yet Price continuously fails to recognise the trail of destruction he leaves in his wake. From relationships with his colleagues (most of whom’s confidence he unwittingly destroys) to objectifying and using disadvantaged people for the gain of whatever organisation he is working for, Price’s cringe factor grows with every misstep in the novel. Yet the reader senses that everyone knows, or has at least met, a Graham Price in their life.
Price’s money raising tactics become too aggressive for London when his bid to set up a Richard III marketing campaign for the Scoliosis Partnership brutally and unsurprisingly backfires. He is once more oblivious to the offence he has caused and immediately takes up the opportunity to try his luck rebuilding the country of Z through an NGO. The reader wonders how much worse it can get, but Kherbek, never afraid to push boundaries, accelerates the disaster further. In Z, Price’s ‘practices’ become increasingly rogue as he befriends arms dealers, sets up photoshoots with magazines featuring Hollywood celebrities and even personally contacts Z’s dictator ignoring all international codes and risking harm to the civilian population.
Throughout the chaos Kheberk masterfully demonstrates how Price’s megalomania somehow makes sense to the deranged self and demonstrates how thin the line between aid and self-gain is in the context of the ‘white saviour’ in Africa. Price’s charitable acts gradually descend and become more desperate in a narrative which sways between the farcical and tragic line by line. Kherbeks’ crosshairs are always keenly trained on previous failings by the British state abroad and continually hark to actual moments in a fictionalised context. The reader feels there is no better writer who can find this balance in the present literary landscape. Kherbek’s political understanding and unique ability to build character make Best Practices a true one off not to be missed.
by Antony at East London’s Burley Fisher Books
