Ways of Dialogue Lebanon

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Van 13 tot en met 20 november reisden vier schrijvers met Writers Unlimited naar Libaonon, voor een tournee van een week naar Beiroet, Tyre, Baaklin, Beqaa en Tripoli. Martijn Knol (Nederland), Witold Szablowski (Polen), Vamba Sherif (Liberia/Nederland) en Usha Kuniga Ramaswamy (India), treden samen met Libanese schrijvers en dichters op. Uit Libanon namen deel de schrijvers Hanan Al Shaykh, Sawsan alAbtah, Rasha alAmir, Abbass Beydoun, Youssef Bazzi, Mark Daou, Maya elHajj, Zena el Khalil, Iman Humaydan, Hussam Itani, Hala Kawtharani, Roseanne Khalaf, Issa Makhlouf , Sahar Mandour, Bilal Orfali , Alawiyah Sobh, Assaad Thebian, Fadi elTofeili, Fawzi Yammine, Hyam Yared, Khaled Ziadeh en Rewa Zeinati.

Rond het thema 'Ways of Dialogue' droegen de schrijvers voor uit eigen werk en lazen ze fragmenten uit hun literaire traditie. Centrale thema's in de programma's waren de verschillende tradities in deling van macht en besluitvorming. Het was de tweede tournee in een serie in de Arabische wereld. De eerste in de serie vond plaats in mei 2016 in Marokko. Deze tournee was een samenwerkingsproject met PEN Libanon. De optredens waren zowel voor algemeen publiek, als voor studenten van middelbare scholen en universiteiten.

Dit project van Writers Unlimited wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door het Nederlandse Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken. PEN Libanon werkt voor dit project samen met o.a. Centre for Arts and Humanities (CAH), American University of Beirut; Centre for Arab and Middle Eastern studies (CAMES) en Aaliya's Bookshop, Jemayzeh, Beirut.

Information

Date and time Monday 14 November 2016 from 11:00 to 13:00 hrs
Location Locatie onbepaald

Line-up

Maaza Mengiste

(Ethiopia, 1971) debuted in 2010 with the heartbreaking Beneath the Lion’s Gaze. This novel was hailed by The Guardian as one of the ten best recent African books. The story is set in the 1970s and begins with the last days of Emperor Haile Selassie. Mengiste continues with the cruel regime of the socialist Derg, who is etimated to have caused 100,000 deaths: "I wanted to show the humanity and the destruction of the people who suffered under this regime." Central themes of Mengiste's fiction and non-fiction are migration, the Ethiopian revolution, and the life of black African immigrants in Europe. She currently works for various orgranisations that support displaced people and human rights. Several Amerian celebrities like Meryl Streep and Alicia Keys worked on her film project Girl Rising, about the situation of girls around the world. Mengiste lives and works in New York City.
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Witold Szabłowski

(Poland, 1980) studied journalism and political science in Warsaw. After an internship at CNN in Istanbul he wrote a series of reports about Turkey for the Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza; some of this material formed part of his acclaimed essay collection Zabójca z miasta moreli (Assassin from Apricot City). In it, Szablowski provides a nuanced portrait of a society torn between East and West, Islamism and Islamophobia, the desire to belong to Europe and an aversion to all things European. He always chooses a particular angle; for example, he went looking for the story behind the shoe thrown at George W. Bush by an Iraqi journalist. In 2010, his reportage Dziś przypłyną tu dwa trupy (Two Bodies Washed Up Today), about immigrants trying to reach Europe via Istanbul, won the Journalism Prize of the European Parliament. At the invitation of the Flemish-Duch cultural organization Huis de Buren (Neighbours' House), Szablowski wrote Alle poorten van Lublin (All the Gates of Lublin), a literary portrait of the Polish city of Lublin.
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Usha K R

Martijn Knol

(Zeist, NL, 1973) was a comedian and worked in advertising before writing his 2003 debut De Duiker (The Diver), which recreates a striking portrait of an era through the distinctive speech of three students. The romantic tragedy Aphinar followed in 2007, in which Knol alternates between angry interior monologues and a sensual and tarnished love story. His major novel Alles kan kapot (Everything Kaputt) was published in 2011, about the fates of three generations of a family. The book owes a literary debt to Céline, Woolf, and David Foster Wallace (among others), but above all it shows off an authentic and innovative voice. Anything is possible in Knol's work. The dead can rise from their ashes and demand to regain their position in a book. Knol also likes to play with language and style. The Dutch Literary Fund chose Alles kan kapot as one of the best Dutch books of 2011. Besides novels, Knol writes short stories, essays, blogs, and criticism, and is an editor with the literary magazine Tirade. He's currently at work on a new novel.
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Vamba Sherif

(Liberia, 1973) is a novelist, essayist, journalist and film critic. His debut novel Land of the Fathers (1999) is partly based on his grandmother's stories and deals with the clash between slaves returning from the US and other Liberians. The novel The Black Napoleon (2015) portrays Samori Touré, who founded the Wasulu-empire in western Africa in the 19th century. His journalism, including film reviews, appears in publications such as The New York Times, Trouw and One World. Together with  Ebissé Rouw he compiled Zwart (Black, 2018), a collection of stories by Afro-European authors from the Low Countries. Ongekende liefde (Unprecedented Love), in which he tells his life story to his ten-year-old daughter Bendu, was published in 2021. Sherif's historical novel The Emperor’s Son (2023) follows Zaiwulo, a young prodigy who trains under sage Talata of the Haidarah family in Musadu. Entangled in the intrigues of Emperor Samori, the 'Black Napoleon,' Zaiwulo matures into a formidable soldier.
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