Rodaan al Galidi, Annelies Verbeke en Pierre Jarawan

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Three countries, three authors, three novels about immigrants finding their way in a new country. Rodaan Al Galidi is a poet and writer. Born in Iraq and trained as a civil engineer, he has lived in the Netherlands since 1998. His new book Two Blankets, Three Sheets is an inspiring tale of survival, a close-up view of the hidden world of refugees and human smugglers, and a sobering reflection of our times. Annelies Verbeke is a Belgian writer of award winning novels, short stories and plays. Her novel Thirty Days about Alphonse, a Senegales immigrant, is a deeply moving story about love, outsiders and the human need to connect. Pierre Jarawan moved to Germany with his family at the age of three. Inspired by his father’s imaginative bedtime stories, he started writing at the age of thirteen. His first novel about Samir’s quest for his missing father, The Storyteller, became an international bestseller. Host: Fiep van Bodegom.

Program in cooperation with World Editions.
Books for sale courtesy of De Vries Van Stockum Books

Information

Date and time Friday 21 February 2020 from 20:30 to 22:00 hrs
Location Podium B - Centrale Bibliotheek Den Haag, Spui 68, 5e etage

Line-up

Rodaan Al Galidi

(Iraq, 1971) fled his country in 1998 after completing architecture studies, was given asylum in the Netherlands and settled there legally in 2007. Since then he has published poetry, novels and collections of his columns. He received the 2000 El Hizjra literature award and the 2011 Literature Prize of the European Union. In 2013 he published Liever niet, antwoordt de liefde (Maybe Not, Was Love's Reply), an anthology of refreshing love poetry. His novel Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg (Two Blankets, Three Sheets) tells of his experiences as an asylum seeker in the Netherlands. Al Galidi published the short story collection Duizend-en-een-nachtmerries (A Thousand and One Nightmares) in 2017 and a poem collection Neem de titel serieus (Take the title seriously) in 2018.
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Annelies Verbeke

(Belgium, 1976) writes novels, film scripts and plays. Her debut novel Slaap! (Sleep!) was published in 2003, followed by three novels (Reus, Vissen redden, Dertig dagen); four collections of short stories; a collection of journalism pieces, Wakker (Awake, together with photographer Charlie De Keersmaecker); and the graphic novella Tirol Inferno, written in iambic pentameter and rhyme and co-created with illustrator Klaas Verplancke. Her work has been translated into 26 languages and won various prizes, such as the F. Bordewijk Prize, the Opzij Literature Prize, the J.M.A. Biesheuvel Prize, and the NRC Handelsblad Readers Prize. She has also written several plays and film scripts, and worked with various theatre companies, especially Rotterdam-based Wunderbaum. In 2023, she published short stories in Koude soep (Cold Soup) and JIJ (You), an anthology of you-stories. January 2024 will see the premiere of Wunderbaum speel live (online gaat het mis), a theatre production by Wunderbaum with a stage text by Annelies Verbeke.
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Pierre Jarawan

(1985) was born to a Lebanese father and a German mother and moved to Germany with his family at the age of three. Inspired by his father’s imaginative bedtime stories, he started writing at the age of thirteen. He has won international prizes as a slam poet, and in 2016 was named Literature Star of the Year by the daily newspaper Abendzeitung. Jarawan received a literary scholarship from the City of Munich (the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis) for The Storyteller, his first novel, which went on to become a bestseller and booksellers’ favorite in Germany and the Netherlands and is now conquering the UK and US, where he has recently been touring. Pierre Jarawan lives in Munich.
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Fiep van Bodegom

(India, 1984) is a writer, critic and translator. She is editor of Extra Extra Magazine and teaches in the Creative Writing department at Artez University of the Arts. She writes regularly on literature (including for De Groene Amsterdammer, NRC and De Nederlandse Boekengids) and has published translations, essays and fiction.
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