Question: Is it arrogant to return to a place you’ve never been?
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, a young woman travels from the US to her parents’ home country, Egypt, to start a new chapter. But despite the family connection, Cairo doesn’t feel like home, and her Arabic is insufficient.
In Cairo, she meets a young Egyptian man, who moved to the big city from a rough childhood in the Egyptian countryside. The two enter into an intense relationship, despite class and cultural differences – and the man’s increasing drug abuse. After feeling consequential as a photographer in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, cynicism has taken over as the revolution petered out.
Noor Naga’s award-winning novel If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is an original and poetic portrayal of a dark love story of our time, in which political events as well as a childhood between cultures are part of the story. The novel alternates between the point of view of the man and the woman, and in those shifts, the differences between them grow increasingly clearer. Who holds the power in the relationship, and who has the right to tell the story?
Noor Naga is a Canadian-Egyptian writer. For If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, she received the Center For Fiction First Novel Prize, and it was named best novel of the year by Time, Kirkus, BookForum and Buzzfeed.
At the House of Literature, Naga is joined by academic, writer and comedian Mona Abdel-Fadil for a conversation about explosive love, broken dreams and home countries that aren’t really home.
The conversation will be in English.
The event is supported by NORAD.
