The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Book Club at Christopher Newport University meets twice a semester to discuss Middle Eastern books in translation. Some of the books we read include: Tillers of Water (Hoda Barakat, 2001); The Baghdad Eucharist (Sinan Antoon, 2016); No Knives in the Kitchen of this City (Khalid Khalifa, 2013); The Baghdad Clock (Shahad al-Rawi, 2018); The Beekeeper in Sinjar: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq (Dunya Mikhail, 2017); The Baghdad Clock (Shahad al-Rawi, 2018); The Old Woman and the River (Ismail Fahd Ismail, 2019).
An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature" On November 15 (12:20-1:30) we will be reading A Country for Dying. Paris, Summer 2010. Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her. Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona. Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira's first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira. Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Taïa writes, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future." An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature" To join the discussion, click the link below https://meet.google.com/ezp-cths-fwc Dial-in: (US) +1 626-385-6036 PIN: 925 628 761# Please RSVP To: Professor Diana Obeid ([email protected]). |