Marina Warner and Amin Maalouf in conversation
Date March, 31 2021
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.
Speakers
Marina Warner
An award-winning novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer, who works across genres and cultures exploring myths and stories. Recent work includes Once Upon a Time (2014) and Stranger Magic (2011), for which she won a Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2013. In 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Holberg Prize, and was also Chair of the judging panel for the Man Booker International Book Prize. She is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls, and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Amin Maalouf
Lebanese-born French author who has lived in France since 1976. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into over 40 languages. He is winner of the Prix Goncourt and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. The Disoriented was published in Frank Wynne’s English translation by World Editions in January 2021.