Marina Warner and Amin Maalouf in conversation

Date: March 31, 2021, 21:30 - 22:30
Location: Live Webinar on Zoom

President of the Royal Society of Literature, Marina Warner, is joined in conversation by French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf. Their conversation, streamed live from London and Paris, centred around their explorations of birthplace, displacement and return. Maalouf’s novel 'The Disoriented' sees the protagonist return to Maalouf’s native Lebanon, having fled the Civil War, and Marina Warner’s "unreliable memoir", 'Inventory of a Life Mislaid', explores her early life in Egypt. Whilst these stories look back in time, the themes remain startlingly current in times of rising nationalism - which Maalouf also reflects on in 'Adrift', a book length essay published last year. Political and social polarisation lay behind the 1952 uprising in Cairo, during which Warner’s father’s bookshop was burned down, and, in 1975, sparked the Lebanese Civil War, which forced Maalouf to leave Beirut for Paris.

This was a conversation that moved through decades, explored language and traverse borders.