Amin Maalouf interviewed by Petra Stienen

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Arabist and writer Petra Stienen talks to the festival's guest of honour, the Lebanese/French author Amin Maalouf. 

Multiculturality in the Dutch debate has almost become anathema, but for Amin Maalouf it is a human right: 'We live in a world in which we force people to choose where they belong. We need a new attitude with regard to identity, it must be made legitimate to have more than one identity.'

In his latest novel Les Desorientés (The Disoriented) he describes the feelings and thoughts leading to migration: 'Maybe my life doesn't amount to anything, just like the lives of the people I have known, compared to that of a famous conqueror. But it is my life, and if I believe it only deserves to be forgotten, then I haven't deserved to live.’ 

In English. 

Watch an English spoken interview by Wim Brands on Sunday 12 January on Dutch televisionk here.

Thirty minutes after this programme, at 4 p.m. feel free to join the Wim Brands Reading club, in which the Dutch translation of Maalouf's novel will be will be discussed with the audience, and with writer Fouad Laroui and Arabist Petra Stienen.  That programma is in Dutch.

Information

Date and time Saturday 18 January 2014 from 14:00 to 15:30 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 1

Line-up

Amin Maalouf

(Lebanon, 1949) is a journalist, writer and winner of the Prix Goncourt. Since 2011 is has been a member of the Académie Française. Trained as a sociologist and economist he decided at a young age to become a journalist. In 1976 he fled the civil war in his country and settled in France. After the success of his The Crusades through Arab Eyes (1983) he chose to become a full-time writer. Eight of his titles have appeared in the Netherlands so far. In his latest book Les emigrés a historian, much-admired in France, returns to Lebanon to say goodbye to a dying friend. He meets people from his youth who have made other, gruesome decisions. But is he allowed to judge them from his own luxurious position? An intriguing novel which, according to Le Figaro ‘continues to vibrate’. The struggle with his background plays a role in earlier work. In the essay Murdering Identities Maalouf pleads for a multicultural identity.
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Petra Stienen

(Roermond, NL, 1965) studied Arabic and Middle East studies. Her second book was published in 2012: Het andere Arabische geluid (The Other Arab Voice), about voices of humanity and hope during the hectic transition period in the new Middle East. Her first book Dromen van een Arabische lente (Dreaming of an Arab Spring, 2008) was about the life and work of a human-rights diplomat in the Arab world. In both books she goes in search of the kind of stories that get little attention in Western media. Currently, Stienen is a publicist and independent consutant. She writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant newspapers, has a column in the women's monthly magazine Opzij, and reguarly appears as a commentator on radio and television programmes and in debates at home and abroad.
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