The Arab World Meets Europe: A Reading and Conversation with Elias Khoury and Jocelyne Cesari

Join us for a reading and conversation with Elias Khoury. Khoury will read from his latest novel, Broken Mirrors: Sinalcol (Archipelago Books, January, 2016). The novel follows Karim, a Lebanese doctor who has escaped the civil war by emigrating to France, as he returns to Beirut like a “criminal returns to the scene of his crime.”

The conversation will be moderated by Jocelyne Cesari, Professor of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, UK, Senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on Religion, Peace and World Affairs. It will focus on the ongoing revolutionary process in the Middle East and its impact on Europe’s future.

Elias Khoury, born in Beirut, is the author of thirteen novels, four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. He was awarded the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, which was named Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and a Notable Book by The New York Times. Khoury’s Yalo, White Masks, Little Mountain, The Journey of Little Gandhi, and City Gates are also available in English. Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at New York University. As Though She Were Sleeping received France’s inaugural Arabic Novel Prize.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Iraqi Studies, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, the Middle East and North African Studies Program, and the literary journal AGNI. Free and open to the public. Supported in part by a Getting to Know Europe grant from the European Commission Delegation. Light reception and book-signing to follow.