TMR 41 • FORGETTING Roundtable Discussion
2024-05-16 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
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Join us online on Thursday, May 16th at 1pm EST/ 7pm CET/ 6pm UK for our May roundtable discussion which invites four contributors to TMR 41, FORGETTING, to a conversation around the culture of memory and forgetting in the Arab world.
As Mai Al Nakib asserts in her essay, “Writing is a memory archive, [providing] a portal to lost time, to fading traces of existence.” And this archive created and maintained by writers is often preserved against/in contradiction to/in defiance of/in resistance to and in spite of the approved narratives of the State. And so, four writers from four different Arab countries, each with its own traumatic and turbulent relationship to memory and forgetfulness—Nabil Salih, from Iraq, Mai Al Nakib, from Kuwait, Saleem Haddad, from Palestine via Lebanon, and Asmaa El Gamal, from Egypt—sit down with senior editor Lina Mounzer, from Lebanon, to talk about those relationships and to discuss how personal memory might act upon the historical record.
Read this month’s editorial by Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, “Why FORGETTING?”.
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About the speakers:
Lina Mounzer is a Lebanese writer and translator. She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times and her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Freeman’s, Washington Post, and The Baffler, as well as in the anthologies Tales of Two Planets (Penguin 2020), and Best American Essays 2022 (Harper Collins 2022). She is a senior editor at The Markaz Review.

Mai Al-Nakib was born in Kuwait and spent the first six years of her life in London; Edinburgh; and St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a PhD in English literature from Brown University. She was an Associate Professor of English and comparative literature at Kuwait University, where she taught for twenty years; she recently left this position to write full-time. Her research focuses on cultural politics in the Middle East, with a special emphasis on gender, cosmopolitanism, and postcolonial issues. Her short story collection, The Hidden Light of Objects, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014. It won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award. Her debut novel, An Unlasting Home—published by Mariner Books in the US and Saqi in the UK—came out in paperback in April 2023. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including Ninth Letter; The First Line; After the Pause; World Literature Today; Rowayat; New Lines Magazine; and the BBC World Service. She divides her time between Kuwait and Greece.
Read her centerpiece essay in this month’s issue, “Memory Archive: Between Remembering and Forgetting.”

Saleem Haddad is a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist currently based in Lisbon, with roots in Amman, Beirut, and London. His award-winning debut novel, Guapa, was published in 2016.
Read his book review of “My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine” in our May issue.

Asmaa Elgamal is a writer and scholar from Alexandria, Egypt. She earned her PhD in International Development and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her research explored the colonial and military histories of spatial planning in the Middle East and North Africa. Her writing has appeared in New Lines Magazine, Contingent Magazine, and Insider. She was also longlisted for the 2021 DISQUIET International Literary Prize for Non-Fiction.
Read her essay, “The Elephant in the Box” in this month’s issue.

Nabil Salih is a writer and photographer from Baghdad who holds an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown and is pursuing a second MA in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College. His writings appear in Jadaliyya, Allegra Lab, Al Jazeera English and LeftEast among others, and have been translated to Italian, Spanish, French and other languages.
Read his essay, “Regarding the Photographs of Others—An Iraqi Journey Toward Remembering” in our latest issue.

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TMR Book Club Discusses "A Nearby Country Called Love" with author Salar Abdoh
2024-04-24 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Join the TMR Book Club on Wednesday, April 24th at 7pm CET/ 1pm EST/ 6pm UK to discuss “A Nearby Country Called Love” online with the author, Salar Abdoh.
About the book:
A sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which a man struggles to find his place in an Iran on the brink of combusting.
Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman’s death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions of his own family history, throughout which his late brother Hashem, a prominent queer artist in Tehran’s underground, defied their father, a skilled martial artist bound to traditional notions of honor and masculinity.
Issa soon finds himself thrown into a circle of people living on the margins of society, negotiating a razor-like code of conduct that rewards loyalty and encourages aggression and intolerance in equal measure. As the city explodes around him, Issa realizes that it is the little acts of kindness that matter most, the everyday humanity of individuals finding love and doing right by one another.
Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent, A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance. Published by Viking.

About the author:
Salar Abdoh was born in Iran and splits his time between Tehran and New York City. He is the author of the novels Tehran at Twilight, The Poet Game, Opium, and Out of Mesopotamia and the editor of Tehran Noir. He teaches in the MFA program at the City College of New York.
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Table ronde autour du Numéro 40 PARIS du point de vue de ses créatifs issus des mondes arabes
2024-04-18 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
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Nous avons le plaisir de réunir 3 contributeurs de notre numéro de Paris pour discuter de leurs récits et portraits ainsi que de leur quotidien dans la capitale.
Nous vous donnons rendez-vous le jeudi 18 avril à 19h sur Zoom pour un moment d’échange et une invitation à revisiter ensemble la ville d’un point de vue oriental.
Ce numéro donne la parole à de nombreuses diasporas des mondes arabes dont l’histoire se mêle avec la ville des lumières.
Découvrez les écrits de nos trois invités:
Coline Houssais nous partage en exclusivité la genèse de son ouvrage Paris en lettres arabes qui sortira en mai prochain aux éditions Actes Sud.
Wanis El Kabbaj nous livre un témoignage intime de la vie de son père à Paris intitulé Heureux comme un Arabe à Paris.
Sasha Moujaes nous conte un portrait passionnant d’Ariella Aïsha Azoulay en lien avec son dernier livre La résistance des bijoux aux éditions Rot Bo Krik : Depuis Paris, défaire les géographies coloniales.
Retrouvez l’éditorial de notre rédacteur en chef Jordan Elgrably: Pourquoi Paris?
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Coline Houssais
Née en Bretagne, Coline Houssais est une auteure, commissaire et chercheuse indépendante spécialisée dans l’histoire culturelle de l’immigration maghrébine et proche-orientale en Europe ainsi que dans les musiques du monde arabe. Diplômée de Sciences Po, l’Institut Français d’Études Arabes de Damas, l’INALCO et la London School of Economics, elle enseigne à Sciences Po. Fondatrice de l’Agence Ustaza à Paris, elle est également résidente de la Fondation Camargo (2020) et du programme de résidence IMéRA-MUCEM (2021). Ses dernières publications incluent une anthologie de la musique arabe (“Musiques du Monde Arabe, une anthologie en 100 artistes”, Le Mot et le Reste, 2020) et une participation aux deux premiers volumes d’Araborama (Institut du Monde Arabe/Seuil).

Sasha Moujaes
Originaire de Beyrouth, Sasha Moujaes est actuellement basée à Paris. Diplômée de Sciences Po et de l’Institut national des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), elle s’est spécialisée en sociologie politique avec un intérêt particulier pour les mondes arabo-méditerranéens. Après plusieurs années d’expérience dans le secteur culturel, elle s’engage aujourd’hui dans des projets associatifs au croisement des enjeux LBGTQI+ et de migration.

Wanis El Kabbaj
Né à Paris, et de nationalité franco-marocaine, Wanis El Kabbaj a 25 ans d’expérience en marketing sur 4 continents. Ayant grandi dans une famille férue de littérature et autour des livres d’Amine Maalouf, Taha Hussein, Naguib Mahfouz, il a développé une profonde appréciation pour les récits puissants, les phrases ciselées et les mots justes. C’est cet amour qui l’a poussé à donner deux TED Talks sur l’avenir des transports urbains et la relation ambivalente entre les nationalismes et la mondialisation qui ont recueilli 6 millions de vues dans le monde entier. Wanis est passionné de diversité culturelle, qu’il expérimente au quotidien dans sa propre famille et milite pour l’émergence de sociétés inclusives, humanistes et ouvertes.
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TMR Book Club Discusses "The Applicant" with author Nazli Koca
2024-03-31 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
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Join TMR’s Book Club on March 31st at 1pm EST/ 7pm CET to discuss Nazli Koca’s “The Applicant” and meet the author.
About the book:
It’s 2017 and Leyla, a Turkish twenty-something living in Berlin is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel after failing her thesis, losing her student visa, and suing her German university in a Kafkaesque attempt to reverse her failure.
Increasingly distant from what used to be at arm’s reach—writerly ambitions, tight knit friendships, a place to call home—Leyla attempts to find solace in the techno beats of Berlin’s nightlife, with little success. Right as the clock winds down on the hold on her visa, Leyla meets a conservative Swedish tourist and—against her political convictions and better judgment—begins to fall in love, or something like it. Will she accept an IKEA life with the Volvo salesman and relinquish her creative dreams, or return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, her father’s ghost still haunting their lives?
While she waits for the German court’s verdict on her future, in the pages of her diary, Leyla begins to parse her unresolved past and untenable present. An indelible character at once precocious and imperiled, Leyla gives voice to the working-class and immigrant struggle to find safety, self-expression, and happiness. “The Applicant” is an extraordinary dissection of a liminal life between borders and identities, an original and darkly funny debut.
About the author:
Nazlı Koca is a writer and poet from Turkey who now lives in the US. Her writing has appeared in the Threepenny Review, Bookforum, and Second Factory, among other outlets. “The Applicant” is her first novel.
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TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN Roundtable Discussion
2024-03-21 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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The Markaz Review presents a conversation around TMR 39’s theme, BURN IT ALL DOWN, in which senior editor Lina Mounzer talks to three of the issue’s contributors on their essays.
In her editorial, “Why Burn It All Down?”, Mounzer quoted the poetry of John Donne and suggested that the Gaza genocide represents “a collective diminishment” of us all — westerners and easterners alike, while in her essay “The Time of Monsters,” Layla AlAmmar took inspiration from several Arab poets, including Khalil Gibran, as well as writers Walter Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci, and argued that Hamas was trying “to stop the Nakba.” In “Al-Thakla—Arabic as the Original Mourner,” Abdelrahman ElGendy struggles with wishing to express himself in Arabic while admitting that English holds more currency; he argues that “English does not give me a seat at the table [but] offers me the chance to point at the table.” ElGendy asks: “How do you hold your grief in a language that’s been its main perpetrator?” And Michelle Eid in her essay “Israel’s Environmental and Economic War on Lebanon” suggests that Israel isn’t only at war with the Palestinians, but perhaps the entire region. What needs to be dismantled or destroyed before a new world can be ushered in? This conversation gives the microphone to a younger Arab generation who, though perfectly fluent in English, takes issue with western hegemonic discourse.
This roundtable discussion will take place online on March 21st at 2pm EST/ 7pm CET/ 6pm UK. This event is open and free to the public. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers:
LINA MOUNZER is a Lebanese writer and translator. She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times and her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Freeman’s, Washington Post, and The Baffler, as well as in the anthologies Tales of Two Planets (Penguin 2020), and Best American Essays 2022 (Harper Collins 2022). She is a senior editor at The Markaz Review.
Read her editorial in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: Why “Burn it All Down”?
LAYLA ALAMMAR is a writer and academic from Kuwait. She earned a PhD in Arab women’s fiction and literary trauma theory, and she has an MSc in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Pact We Made (2019), was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel, Silence is a Sense (2021), was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She has written for The Guardian, LitHub, the Times Literary Supplement, ArabLit Quarterly, The New Arab, GQ Middle East, and NewLines Magazine.
Read her essay in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: The Time of Monsters
ABDELRAHMAN ELGENDY is a Dietrich fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s Nonfiction Writing MFA, and a Heinz fellow at Pitt’s Global Studies Center. His work has received awards or fellowships from Logan Nonfiction Program, Tin House Workshop, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He was a finalist for the 2021 and 2023 Margolis Award for Social Justice Journalism.
Read his centerpiece essay in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: Al-Thakla—Arabic as the Original Mourner
MICHELLE EID is a researcher, consultant, and editor. Her areas of interest are socio-economic rights and development, focusing on agriculture and food sovereignty in the Levant. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Al Rawiya, a magazine focused on the Levant region.
Read her essay in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: Israel’s Environmental and Economic Warfare on Lebanon

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TMR Conversations: Rula Jebreal on the Present Moment
2024-03-07 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Join us on March 7th at 1pm EST/ 7pm CET/ 6pm UK for an interview organized by TMR’s Editor-in-Chief Jordan Elgrably with Rula Jebreal about what it means to be a Palestinian writer in an era when Palestinian writers and journalists are considered by Israel to be enemies of the state. Jebreal will address the reality in Gaza and the West Bank, and where we go from here.
This online event is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speaker
Rula Jebreal is an award-winning journalist, author, and foreign policy analyst renowned for her groundbreaking work in Europe, the United States, and across the Middle East. Jebreal’s diverse body of work reflects her life-long engagement with topics that have directly impacted her life, both personally and professionally, from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the war on terror, and global far right movements rising throughout Europe and the United States. Jebreal has also grappled with the the war on truth, propaganda and conspiracy theories, and in fact for the past five years has been teaching a course at the University of Miami, entitled “Persuasion, Propaganda, and Genocide.” She is an international bestselling author, whose novel Miral, among other works, has been translated into more than 14 languages. Jebreal is a Visiting Professor at the University of Miami, and serves on the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, a body relaunched in 2018 by French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as the Advisory Board of The U.S./Middle East Project. She is fluent in Italian, English, Hebrew, and Arabic.
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TMR Book Club Discusses "Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art from the Women’s Protest in Iran" with editor Malu Halasa
2024-02-25 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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We are on the one-year anniversary of the women’s freedom marches in Iran.
Jina Mahsa Amini’s death at the hands of Iran’s Morality Police on 16th of September, 2022 sparked widespread protests across the country. Women took to the streets, uncovering their hair, burning headscarves and chanting “Woman Life Freedom’ — ‘Zan Zendegi Azadi” in Persian and “Jin Jîyan Azadî” in Kurdish — in mass demonstrations. An explosion of creative resistance followed as art and photography shared online went viral and people around the world saw what was really going on in Iran.
Woman Life Freedom captures this historic moment in artwork and first-person accounts. This striking collection goes behind the scenes at forbidden fashion shows; records the sound of dissent in Iran where it is illegal for women to sing unaccompanied in public; and walks the streets of Tehran with ‘The Smarties’ — Gen Z women who colour and show their hair in defiance of the authorities, despite the potentially devastating consequences. Extolling the power of art, writing and body politics — both female and queer — this collection is a universal rallying call and a celebration of the women the regime has tried and failed to silence.
Published by Saqi Books, London. We meet the editor, Malu Halasa, to talk about the book online, on Sunday, Feb. 25 at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET.
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TMR Conversations: Resistance in the Face of Annihilation
2024-02-22 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Layla Maghribi interviews Palestinian filmmakers Hind Shoufani and Saeed Taji Farouky on activism and art in Palestinian filmmaking today, and on the role of Palestinian artists in the resistance movement, as well as how to push back against anti-Arab and Palestinian cancellation and censorship in today’s super-charged media landscape.
Layla will interview Hind and Saeed live on February 22nd at 1pm EST/ 7pm CET/ 6pm UK. This online event is open to all and free to the public; donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers
Layla Maghribi is a British Arab journalist, currently based in the UK after several years in the Middle East working for international media outlets, including Reuters and CNN International. Raised in England, Layla has lived in Italy, Syria, Lebanon and the UAE, and has a special interest in social issues affecting Arabic-speaking communities, particularly in relation to culture, immigration and mental health. She is a correspondent with The National News based in London. You can read more of her work here or on Twitter @layla_maghribi.
Hind Shoufani is has been a filmmaker, writer and poet for the past 25 years. She recently won a BAFTA for the Oscar-nominated short film “The Present,” and her latest documentary, Heavy Metal, premiered at the Tribeca Film
Festival in 2023. Her first feature film Trip Along Exodus screened in over 30 countries. She is a Fulbright scholar from Jordan, with an MFA in film from The Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Hind has won awards for her personal and professional achievements, helmed commercial projects for corporate and NGO clients, and influenced the literary cultural scene in the SWANA region through events, mentorship & publications. She has published creative essays, prose and poetry in numerous international journals, magazines and anthologies.
Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian-Egyptian-British filmmaker, educator, and curator. His documentary A Thousand Fires won the Marco Zucchi award for most innovative documentary in the Directors Fortnight of the 2021 Locarno Film Festival. A previous documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year premiered at the Berlinale 2015 and won the Audience Choice Panorama Award and the Amnesty Human Rights Award. He runs the Radical Film School in London, a free film course for participants from backgrounds underrepresented in the film industry.
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TMR Conversations: Anna Lekas Miller on "Love Across Borders" with Lina Mounzer
2024-02-15 17:30 - 18:30 (Europe/Paris)
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When Anna Lekas Miller met and fell in love with Salem Rizk in Istanbul, she had no idea that the obstacles they would have to overcome in order to build a life together would include a Muslim Ban and the UK Home Office. The fellow journalists were both in Istanbul covering the fallout from the Syrian war and the ISIS occupation. But when a deportation order for Rizk was issued, the couple was forced to contend with all the heretofore invisible structural inequalities between them, a result of the lopsided choices afforded to them by their respective passports (American; Syrian).
Lekas Miller’s book, Love Across Borders, is at once a recounting of the couple’s efforts to find a place that would allow both of them to settle down long-term without fear of deportation, as well as an overview of the borders and laws that have come to shape love stories such as theirs. On the way, she speaks to a number of other couples—in the US, Europe, and Lebanon—about their struggles (some truly harrowing) to build a life together in a world where your worth as a human being is often assessed in relation to your passport.
For TMR’s February issue, appropriately entitled LSD (for Love, Sex, Desire), Anna Lekas Miller will be in discussion with writer and TMR Senior Editor Lina Mounzer. The discussion, much to Lekas Miller’s chagrin, is scheduled for February 15 – as close to Valentine’s Day as possible without foiling anyone’s plans for the big day.
“Honestly, I hate Valentine’s Day,” she confided, “but because of this book I’m forever associated with it, for better or for worse.”
This led to a brainwave on Mounzer’s behalf, who will be steering the discussion through the book and the process of writing it, but will also put Lekas Miller in the hot seat with a series of fun and racy questions about all things love and romance. Audience members are also invited to ask questions pertaining to both facets of the book, which is at once a serious political manifesto and a series of heart-pounding romantic tales. And given that it’s around Valentine’s Day, if someone is looking for romantic advice, perhaps the discussants might also be persuaded to weigh in…Join us on February 15, 2024 at 5:30pm CET/ 4:30pm UK/ 11:30am EST.
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About the speakers
Anna Lekas Miller is a writer and journalist who covers stories of the ways that conflict and migration shape the lives of people around the world. She has reported from Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, covering the Israeli occupation, the Syrian civil war and exodus to Europe, and the rise and fall of the Islamic State. Since moving to London, she has turned her attention to the rise of the far right in Europe and the United States, investigating immigration systems, white supremacist ideology, and the ways that people are standing up to them. She is most interested in stories of love and healing in an unpredictable and unstable world. Her journalism and essays have appeared in Vanity Fair, the Intercept, CNN, the New Humanitarian, The Markaz Review and New Lines.
Lina Mounzer is a Lebanese writer and translator. She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times and her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Freeman’s, Washington Post, and The Baffler, as well as in the anthologies Tales of Two Planets (Penguin 2020), and Best American Essays 2022 (Harper Collins 2022). She is a senior editor at The Markaz Review.
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This online event is open to all and free to the public; donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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TMR Book Club Discusses "Traces of Enayat" with Iman Mersal
2024-01-28 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Cairo, 1963: Enayat al-Zayyat’s suicide becomes a byword for talent tragically cut down, even as Love and Silence, her only novel, languishes unpublished. Four years after al-Zayyat’s death, the novel will be brought out, adapted for film and radio, praised, and then, cursorily, forgotten. For the next three decades it’s as if al-Zayyat never existed.
Yet when poet Iman Mersal stumbles across Love and Silence in the nineties, she is immediately hooked. Who was Enayat? Did the thought of her novel’s rejection really lead to her suicide? Where did this startling voice come from? And why did Love and Silence disappear from literary history? To answer these questions, Mersal traces Enayat’s life, interviews family members and friends, reconstructs the afterlife of Enayat in the media, and tracks down the flats, schools, archaeological institutes, and sanatoriums among which Enayat divided her days. Touching on everything from dubious antidepressants to domestic abuse and divorce law, from rubbish-strewn squats in the City of the Dead to the glamour of golden-age Egyptian cinema, this wide-ranging, unclassifiable masterpiece gives us a remarkable portrait of a woman artist striving to live on her own terms. Published by And Other Stories in the UK.
We will meet to discuss the book with the author on Sunday, Jan. 28 at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET.
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TMR Book Club Discusses "Palestine +100: stories from a century after the Nakba" with Special Guests
2023-11-26 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Palestine + 100: stories from a century after the Nakba poses a question to 12 Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 — a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba. How might this event — which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes — reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?
Covering a range of approaches — from sci-fi noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce — these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever.
Translated from the Arabic by Raph Cormack, Mohamed Ghalaieny, Andrew Leber, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Yasmine Seale and Jonathan Wright. Published by Comma Press in the UK.
We will meet to discuss the book with host Rana Asfour and special guest writers Basma Ghalayini and Selma Dabbagh on Sunday, Nov. 26 at 1pm EST/ 7pm EST/ 6pm UK.
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Avi Shlaim on His Memoir Three Worlds and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
2023-11-14 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Respected historian at Oxford and author Avi Shlaim (The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World) was born in Iraq but raised and came of age in Israel. In his new memoir Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, he describes the bygone world of Arab Jews, reviews the narrative of Zionism and its call to “rescue” eastern Jews from the Middle East, and critiques many of the received ideas about Jews and Arabs.
Journalist Layla Maghribi interviews Avi Shlaim live on November 14 at 7pm CET/ 6pm UK/ 1pm EST. They will discuss Three Worlds, as well as the present war on Gaza and the implications of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This online event is open to all and free to the public; donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers
Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad and grew up in Israel. As one of the “New Historians” in Israel, he was part of a group that reassessed the history of the country and often shined a light on the repression of the Palestinians. He is now a Professor of International Relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford. His previous books include the critically acclaimed The Iron Wall and he writes regularly for the Guardian, Middle East Eye and other outlets.
Layla Maghribi is a British Arab journalist, currently based in the UK after several years in the Middle East working for international media outlets, including Reuters and CNN International. Raised in England, Layla has lived in Italy, Syria, Lebanon and the UAE, and has a special interest in social issues affecting Arabic-speaking communities, particularly in relation to culture, immigration and mental health. She is currently the host of Third Culture Therapy, a podcast that explores mental wellbeing from a cultural perspective and is writing her first non-fiction book. You can read more of her work here or on Twitter @layla_maghribi.

More about this event
The guest for this upcoming event is Baghdad-born British-Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim and will be guest hosted by writer and podcaster, Layla Maghribi. Shlaim will be discussing his latest book, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, and how many of the revelatory themes are relevant to the current war on Gaza.
Evocatively recollecting a bygone era in Baghdad before the 1950s, when some 130,000 Jews lived almost entirely harmoniously alongside their Muslim compatriots, Shlaim’s book was already an intriguing read when it came out earlier this spring. Now, to the backdrop of unremitting violence and upheaval in Israel / Palestine, I reread it with a mixture of searing lament for a lost era and a much-needed inspiration for a possibly peaceful future.
Besides debunking the Zionist-propagated myth that Arabs and Jews have always hated each other, Shlaim’s book lays bare other controversies. Years of research and archival work led him to conclude that it was Israeli-backed militants who were behind many of the bombings targeting Jews in Iraq in the 1950s and not Arab-Iraqis, as was claimed. Israel’s terrorising actions against Iraqi-Jews were inflicted in a bid to encourage massive migration to Israel with the promise that they would be safer, and more prosperous, in country solely for Jews. Shlaim’s revelations shine a painful spotlight on the traumatisation of innocent civilians for political gains as well as the weaponization of antisemitism, issues that remain painfully weighty today.
The memoir is a coming-of-age story between multiple worlds – the Arab, Jewish, Israeli and British. Tracing his early years in Baghdad, where in 1945 Shlaim was born the youngest child and only son of a prosperous Jewish businessman and notable member of Iraqi of community, his happy childhood is upended with the sudden fleeing of his family to Israel when he was five years old.
In Israel, the “promised land” failed to deliver any tangible gains for the Shlaim family who had fallen steeply in economic and social status following their reluctant exile. After centuries of living in and among Arabs, and being an indelible part of the culture, the Shlaim family, like many Arab-Jews of that era, were tragically uprooted from their lives and communities for the sake of an ideology they were reluctantly forced to adopt. Besides not subscribing to the narrowly exclusive Zionist identity, the discrimination they faced for being Arab Jews, or Mizrahim as they are referred to in Israel, compounded his family’s sense of alienation. Robbed of their belonging in Iraq and rejected by their community in Israel, Shlaim recounts with poignant clarity the pains of a cohort of Zionism’s oft-ignored victims.

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TMR 35 Public Intellectual Roundtable Discussion
2023-11-01 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
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On November 1st, at 6pm CET (1pm EST/5pm UK/9pm Abu Dhabi), The Markaz Review presents a roundtable conversation, moderated by TMR Senior Editor Lina Mounzer, with writers Hisham Bustani and Moustafa Bayoumi, on public intellectuals and their engagement with politics, justice and conflict in these catastrophic times.
This online roundtable is open to all, free to the public; donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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TMR Book Club Discusses Khaled Khalifa's "No One Prayed Over Their Graves"
2023-10-29 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
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This month, the TMR Book Club is reading and discussing No One Prayed Over Their Graves by Khaled Khalifa.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED FICTION

“Gorgeous . . . Lush, elegiac [and] Márquezian . . . A novel of abundance and generosity.” —Sarah Cypher, The Washington Post

“Richly embroidered . . . [Khalifa’s] galloping narration restores life and soul to a city that has become a byword for devastation.” —The Economist

From the National Book Award finalist Khaled Khalifa, the story of two friends whose lives are altered by a flood that devastates their Syrian village.

On a December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.
Hanna was once a wealthy libertine, a landowner who built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. But with the loss of his home, wife, and community, he transforms, becoming an ascetic mystic obsessed with death and the meaning of life. In No One Prayed Over Their Graves, we follow Hanna’s life before and after the flood, tracing friendships, loves and lusts, family and business, until he is just one thread in the rich tapestry of Aleppo.

Khaled Khalifa weaves a sweeping tale of life and death in the hubbub of Aleppine society at the turn of the twentieth century. No One Prayed Over Their Graves is a portrait of a people on the verge of great change—from provincial villages to the burgeoning modernity of the city, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews live and work together, united in their love for Aleppo and their dreams for the future.
Published by MacMillan in the US and Faber in the UK. We meet to discuss the book on Sunday, Oct. 29 at 2 pm Eastern/19:00 CET. This event has been organized in collaboration with Afikra.
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26 sept, Montpellier— Rencontre Littéraire, "Oublier Camus" avec Olivier Gloag
2023-09-26 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
Rencontre avec Olivier Gloag, auteur franco-américain; maître de conférence à l’université de Caroline du Nord (UNC).
Modération de Pierre Daum, reporter au Monde Diplomatique, et auteur d’ouvrages sur le passé colonial de la France.
mardi, 26 septembre, 19h au Librairie Le Grain des mots, 15 Bd du Jeu de Paume, 34000 Montpellier. Entrée libre.

Des programmes scolaires aux discours politiques, dans les médias et les conversations mondaines, Camus est partout le parangon d’un humanisme abstrait qui a ceci de commode – et de suspect – qu’il plait à droite comme à gauche. Peu de chercheurs se sont penchés sur les contradictions du personnage comme le fait Olivier Gloag dans son ouvrage Oublier Camus (La Fabrique, sept. 2023), à partir d’une relecture de Camus dans le texte – contradictions qui constituent pourtant la force motrice de l’œuvre camusienne, une clé de son « style », et expliquent sa popularité actuelle.
Olivier Gloag rappelle l’attachement viscéral de Camus au colonialisme et au mode de vie des colons qui traverse ses trois romans majeurs, L’Étranger, La Peste et Le Premier Homme. Il examine ses engagements politiques à la lumière de sa brouille avec Sartre : la tension entre révolte et révolution, son recours à l’absurde comme refus du cours de l’Histoire, son anticommunisme et son déni de la lutte des peuples colonisés. Il se penche enfin sur les récupérations de Camus : l’auteur le plus populaire en France et le Français le plus lu dans le monde est devenu un enjeu politique et idéologique. L’invocation d’un Camus mythifié projette un reflet flatteur mais falsificateur de l’histoire coloniale. C’est ce Camus-là qu’il faut oublier pour reconnaître les déchirements d’un écrivain tout aussi passionnément attaché aux acquis sociaux du Front populaire qu’à la présence française en Algérie.

9/24—Read River Spirit, Meet Author Leila Aboulela
2023-09-24 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
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The Markaz Book Club novel for September 2023 is River Spirit by Leila Aboulela
(from a rave review in the New York Times) “In 19th-century Sudan, with the Ottoman Empire fading and Britain gaining influence in the region, a religious leader proclaims himself the Mahdi, or the redeemer. He aims to correct the wrongs — excessive taxation, for one — of the foreign rulers. But as the revolution gains strength, and the Mahdi collects followers, his greed for power tarnishes the movement’s ideological purity. Leila Aboulela’s dazzling new novel, River Spirit, follows the course of that revolution as it turns into a new instrument of oppression.”
River Spirit is the unforgettable story of a people who, against the odds and for a brief time, gained independence from foreign rule. This is a powerful tale of corruption and unshakeable devotion – to a cause, to one’s faith and to the people who become family.
We’ll meet to talk about the book on the last Sunday in Sept., the 24th, at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET. Author Leila Aboulela will be joining us.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leila Aboulela is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She is the author of six novels — Bird Summons; The Kindness of Enemies; The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the year; Minaret; Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards; and River Spirit, published by Saqi Books in March 2023. Her short story collection Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year. Her work has been translated into 15 languages and she’s been nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). Leila was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and moved in her mid-twenties to Scotland where she now lives.

A Stranger in Baghdad with Elizabeth Loudon
2023-08-27 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
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TMR’s August 2023 book club selection is the novel is A Stranger in Baghdad by Elizabeth Loudon

In beautifully rendered prose, a mother and a daughter struggle as outsiders in Baghdad and London in this intergenerational drama set against a background of political tension and intrigue
“Who would be charmed by tales of life in the beautiful old house on the banks of the Tigris—looted now no doubt, its shutters torn and the courtyard strewn with mattresses?”
One night in 2003, Anglo-Iraqi psychiatrist Mona Haddad has a surprise visitor to her London office, an old acquaintance Duncan Claybourne. But why has he come? Will his confession finally lay bare what happened to her family before they escaped Iraq?
Their stories begin in 1937, when Mona’s mother Diane, a lively Englishwoman newly married to Ibrahim, an ambitious Iraqi doctor, meets Duncan by chance. Diane is working as a nanny for the Iraqi royal family. Duncan is a young British Embassy officer in Baghdad. When the king dies in a mysterious accident, Ibrahim and his family suspect Diane of colluding with Duncan and the British.
Summoning up the vanished world of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, Elizabeth Loudon’s richly evocative story of one family calls into question British attitudes and policies in Iraq and offers up a penetrating reflection on cross-cultural marriage and the lives of women caught between different worlds.
To read an excerpt, click here.
We’ll meet to talk about the book on the last Sunday in August, the 27th, at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET.

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Read EMISSARIES Short Stories, Meet Author Youssef Rakha, July 2, 1 pm EST
2023-07-02 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
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Emissaries is the new collection of short stories by renowned Egyptian author Youssef Rakha. Many of the stories have appeared previously in journals from the UK, US and the Middle East region. In these Cairo-focused stories written at the height of the Arab Spring, in its wake and its ruins, the reader is led by a colorful cast of characters through a hypnagogic urbanscape pulsating with the specters of post-political Islam and failed revolution.
Writes TMR reviewer Zein El-Amine, “I have not read many works by Arab American writers writing in English, but Rakha’s collection is original, irreverent, and provocative. What engages one most in reading his stories is the language he employs. Even though he is referencing Western pop culture and writers throughout the book, his voice is original. In wielding such prose, Rakha is a pied piper leading the reader into his rabbit holes. The consistency in that voice and the recurring motifs in the book make for a solid read.” Read the review. Get the audio book. Print.
We will meet to discuss these stories on Sunday, July 2nd, at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET. To attend, email books@themarkaz.org.
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TMR Bookgroup Discusses Enter Ghost, with novelist Isabella Hammad
2023-06-04 19:00 (Europe/Paris)
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The June 2023 BookGroup Selection is Enter Ghost, a novel by Isabella Hammad. She will be interviewed by editors Rana Asfour and Jordan Elgrably on Sunday, June 4, at 1 pm Eastern, 18:00 UK and 19:00 EU.
Enter Ghost follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet. After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.
At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in Classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.
A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.
We’ll discuss this novel on Sunday, June 4th, at 1 pm Eastern.
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WORK—a TMR Roundtable Conversation With 5 Writers, May 18th, 12 pm ET/18:00 CET
2023-05-18 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Join The Markaz Review for a spirited roundtable with Iason Athanasiadis • Ahmed Awadalla • Nashwa Nasreldin • Meera Santhanam • Anis Shivani & moderator Jordan Elgrably, in a conversation about work in journalism (Iason Athanasiadis on Al Jazeera), working in Cairo and Berlin (Ahmed Awadalla), working as an Arab Muslim woman in the UK (Nashwa Nasreldin), covering a woman filmmaker struggling to make her film in Lebanon (Meera Santhanam), and immigrant workers in fiction (Anis Shivani). Read writers’ WORK stories here.
This online roundtable is open to all, free to the public; donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review, a nonprofit with no paywall, and no advertising.
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Hadiya Hassein: Waiting for the Past
2023-05-07 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
April 2023 BookGroup Selection is Waiting for the Past, a novel by Hadiya Hussein, translated from the Arabic by Barbara Romaine
Hadiya Hussein’s poignant novel plunges readers into a haunting and powerful story of resilience. Set at the end of Saddam Hussein’s brutal reign, the novel follows Narjis, a young Iraqi woman, on her quest to discover what has become of the man she loves. Yusef, suspected by the regime of being a dissident, has disappeared–presumably either imprisoned or executed. On her journey, Narjis receives shelter from a Kurdish family who welcome her into their home where she meets Umm Hani, an older woman who is searching for her long-lost son. Together they form a bond, and Narjis comes to understand the depth of loss and grief of those around her. At the same time, she is introduced to the warm hospitality of the Kurdish community, settling into their everyday lives, and embracing their customs. Barbara Romaine’s translation skillfully renders this complex, layered story, giving readers a stark yet beautiful portrait of contemporary Iraq.
We’ll discuss this novel on Sunday, May 7, at 12 pm Eastern.

Sophia Al-Maria's memoir The Girl Who Fell to Earth
2023-03-26 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Paris)
email books@themarkaz.org to join this event on Zoom
March 2023 BookGroup Selection is The Girl Who Fell to Earth, a memoir by Sophia Al-Maria (discussing the book on Sunday, March 26, 13 Eastern/18:00 CET).
Award-winning filmmaker and writer Sophia Al-Maria’s The Girl Who Fell to Earth is a funny and wry coming-of-age memoir about growing up in between American and Gulf Arab cultures. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Al-Maria’s journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds.
When Sophia Al-Maria’s mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband’s desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she intends it to be a sort of teenage cultural boot camp. What her mother doesn’t know is that there are some things about growing up that are universal. In Qatar, Sophia is faced with a new world she’d only imagined as a child. She sets out to find her freedom, even in the most unlikely of places.
The Girl Who Fell to Earth takes readers from the green valleys of the Pacific Northwest to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf and on to the sprawling chaos of Cairo. Struggling to adapt to her nomadic lifestyle, Sophia is haunted by the feeling that she is perpetually in exile: hovering somewhere between two families, two cultures, and two worlds. She must make a place for herself—a complex journey that includes finding young love in the Arabian Gulf, rebellion in Cairo, and, finally, self-discovery in the mountains of Sinai.
The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home.

The Search for Home: a Markaz Review Roundtable
2023-03-23 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris)
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The Markaz Review invites you to our HOME roundtable conversation featuring six of the writers in the latest issue talking about their essays as we seek to address the meaning of home. Due to climate disaster, war, civil strife and economic fallout, there are more than 65 million refugees, not to mention the millions of internally displaced migrants in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, to name but a few of the countries experiencing upheaval. As senior writer Arie Amaya-Akkermans notes in his essay, For Those Who Dwell in Tents, “The tents of refuge are not just a prophetic metaphor, but a political reality for millions of people.”
This discussion includes Yesmine Abida on her essay Nabeul, Mon Amour on the town’s lost Jewish community; contributing editor Iason Athanasiadis on his 20-year Odyssey That Forged a Stronger Athenian; Aomar Boum on his brother Mohammed at home in Morocco; TMR’s literary editor Malu Halasa on Broken Home: Britain in the Time of Migration; and Lushik Lotus Lee on Coming of Age in a Revolution. The roundtable is moderated by TMR’s editor, Jordan Elgrably.
This online event is free to the public; donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review, a nonprofit that is free to the public, with zero advertising.
Thursday, March 23, at 19:00 CET (2 pm Eastern, 18:00 UK).

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TMR Conversations: Raja Shehadeh & Amal Ghandour
2023-03-16 18:00 - 19:00 (Asia/Beirut)
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Palestinian attorney Raja Shehadeh, author most recently of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir, will discuss his latest work, along with such previous books as Palestinian Walks and Strangers in the House. He is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. Shehadeh is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights, and the Middle East.
Amal Ghandour is the author of This Arab Life: A Generation’s Journey into Silence. Since 2009, she has held the position of Senior Strategy Adviser to Ruwwad al Tanmeyah, a regional community development initiative that spans Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt.
This talk is free to the public. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review, a nonprofit literary arts review in English, French, Spanish and soon, Arabic. Thursday, the 16th of March, 18:00 Beirut/Ramallah • 17:00 CET • 12 noon Daylight Standard Time (New York).
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Iraq, 20 Years After the War, From the Viewpoint of Its Creatives
2023-03-02 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Paris)
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Iraq, 20 years after the War, Thursday, 2 March, 18:00 CET (12 noon ET/17:00 UK/19:00 Beirut/21:00 Abu Dhabi).
Several participants in this month’s issue on IRAQ will gather together online to discuss their work and where we are today, nearly 20 years after the commencement of the Iraq War, an Anglo-American disaster that befell millions of Iraqis.
Joining the conversation (so far) are playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak and musician Hardi Kurda in the UK and artist Lahib Jaddo in the US.

This conversation will take place online, from 18:00 – 19:00 CET. It will be moderated by Rana Asfour and Malu Halasa.

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Négar Djavadi's Disoriental, Sunday, Feb. 26, 12 noon Eastern
2023-02-26 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
February 2023 BookGroup Selection is Disoriental, the novel by Négar Djavadi.

“Our memories select, eliminate, exaggerate, minimize, glorify, denigrate. They create their own versions of events and serve up their own reality.” —Négar Djavadi

The story of a young girl and her family, at the core of an exploration of Iranian history.
Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five, with a new life and the prospect of a child, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which reach her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them.
In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph. Yet it is Kimiâ herself—punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”—who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel.

We Read/Discuss Out of Mesopotamia, the novel by Salar Abdoh, and Meet the Author
2023-01-29 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
THE JANUARY BOOKGROUP SELECTION IS is Out of Mesopotamia, by Salar Abdoh (no bookgroup meeting in December). The discussion takes place, with the author, on Sunday, January 29, 2023, 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET.
“Imagine getting into Iraq and Syria as an observer of the war on ISIS, and yet very soon after you’ve been close enough to RPGs to smell the explosion and feel the ground shake, you find yourself back in your old life, giving literary readings at swank bookstores in cities at peace, or attending highbrow academic conferences where nobody’s dying, except perhaps bored audience members. Juxtaposing the two realities — one savage and ridiculous, the other sane and predictable — is what the author is after in Out of Mesopotamia.” —Jessica Proett, The Markaz Review
To join the group, email books@themarkaz.org.

Salar Abdoh is an Iranian novelist and essayist who divides much of his time between New York and Tehran. He is the author of the novels Poet Game (2000), Opium (2004), Tehran At Twilight (2014), and Out of Mesopotamia (2020) and the editor and translator of the anthology Tehran Noir (2014). He also teaches in the graduate program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York at the City University of New York. Abdoh seeks to help Iran re-engage with the Arab world and convey more of Iranian culture to the west. Salar Abdoh at Goodreads.

TMR Bookgroup Discusses "The Handsome Jew" by Ali Al-Muqri
2022-08-28 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
The Handsome Jew is a challenging and provocative novel that urges/ invites Muslims and Jews to contemplate themselves and the way they see the other through a doomed love story. This powerful novel tells the tragic saga of two lovers, Salem, a Jew, and Fatima, a Muslim, who fall in a forbidden, intense, and passionate love against all circumstances designed to divide them in a society bound by religion. This boundary-crossing love story epitomises the doomed relationship between Jews and Muslims in Yemen, sheds light on how each community sees the other, interrogates religious and social barriers, and proves that, against all odds, love can conquer all — OR till death do the fated couple part. (Goodreads)
Sunday, Aug. 28, with translator Mbarek Sryfi. To receive the Zoom link, email books@themarkaz.org.

TMR Bookgroup discusses the stories of Ayelet Tsabari
2022-07-31 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
The Markaz Review runs an international book club that meets on Zoom every last Sunday of the month. Readers from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi share thoughts and insights on the month’s selection. Frequently, the author (and sometimes their translator) joins the group during the second half of the hour. Our bookgroup always meets the last Sunday at 1 pm Eastern.
On Sunday, July 31st, we will be talking about the short stories of Ayelet Tsabari in The Best Place on Earth.
Confident, original and humane, the stories in The Best Place on Earth are peopled with characters at the crossroads of nationalities, religions and communities: expatriates, travellers, immigrants and locals.
In the powerfully affecting opening story, “Tikkun,” a chance meeting between a man and his former lover carries them through near tragedy and into unexpected peace. In “Casualties,” Tsabari takes us into the military—a world every Israeli knows all too well—with a brusque, sexy young female soldier who forges medical leave forms to make ends meet. Poets, soldiers, siblings and dissenters, the protagonists here are mostly Israelis of Mizrahi background (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent), whose stories have rarely been told in literature. In illustrating the lives of those whose identities swing from fiercely patriotic to powerfully global, The Best Place on Earth explores Israeli history as it illuminates the tenuous connections—forged, frayed and occasionally destroyed—between cultures, between generations and across the gulf of transformation and loss. [Goodreads]
To get on the list to receive the Zoom link for July 31, email books@themarkaz.org.
TMR’s bookgroup is moderated by Jordanian bookworm (and editor/translator) Rana Asfour.

Joumana Haddad's "The Book of Queens" with Radical Books & TMR
2022-06-04 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
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This online event takes place June 4, 2022 at 12 noon Eastern/17:00 UK/18:00 CET

The Markaz Review in partnership with the Radical Books Collective presents a lively online discussion about Joumana Haddad’s new novel The Book of Queens from Interlink Books, with the author joining in the second half of the hour. Moderated by Bhakti Shringarpure.

Author Joumana Haddad
The Book of Queens is a family saga that spans four generations of women caught up in the tragic whirlwind of turf wars and suffering in the Middle East—from the Armenian genocide and the Israeli occupation of Palestine to modern-day civil wars and the struggles between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon and Syria.
Four queens of a deck of cards dealt a bad hand by fate—Qayah, Qana, Qadar and Qamar—form the branches of the same family tree rooted in the land of their origins despite the forceful winds that repeatedly try to carry them away. A line of red-haired women united by the ties of blood that runs through their veins—which violence has spread through the ages—each with a deep story and all with one thing in common: unwavering power and resilience in the face of adversities of being a woman in a war-torn region.
With the perfect mastery of finely chiseled writing, Joumana Haddad manages to construct a novel of extraordinary intensity, without ever sinking into pathos or grandiloquence. She also challenges the systematic abuse of political and religious power and authority that continues to cloud the lives of a culturally diverse and progressive youth until the present day.

Order a copy.
About the author
Joumana Haddad is an award-winning Lebanese author, journalist, and human rights activist. She was the cultural editor of An-Nahar newspaper for many years and now hosts a TV show focusing on human rights issues in the Arab world. She has received the Blue Metropolis Arab Literary Prize and the Arab Press Prize, among other honors, and was named one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women for four years in a row by Arabian Business magazine. Her works, which have been widely translated and published around the world, include I Killed Scheherazade, Superman is an Arab, and The Third Sex. The Book of Queens, her latest novel, has been translated into French, Italian, and Arabic.
About the host
Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, editor and educator. She is the Creative Director of the Radical Books Collective.
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