“Our Shared Europe” Literature Seminar
12 – 14 November 2010, Seehotel Zeuthen near Berlin
The “Our Shared Europe” literature seminar was the British Council’s first event specifically aimed at exploring Muslim European interaction through contemporary literature. In order to do this we adopted the well-established concept and format of the "Walberberg Seminar on Contemporary Literature from the UK". All photos in this flickr stream © Stephan Röhl
This unique encounter between a diverse group of authors from the UK and other countries with an expert audience from the professional literary community addressed the issue of Islam and cultural identities from the perspective of contemporary literature. The authors shared their views on our diverse societies and cultural markers with the audience through readings and inspiring conversations. In addition, a series of workshops and a panel discussion stimulated a lively dialogue between all participants, writers and experts.
Ahdaf Soueif as the chair had identified an superb group of writers – Inaam Kachachi, Jamal Mahjoub and Robin Yassin-Kassab - whose work, experiences and backgrounds brought a lot to the seminar. The residential venue for the event, on a lake on the outskirts of Berlin, was ideal for an open and intense exchange of thoughts in both formal and informal settings.
Participating authors
Inaam Kachachi was born in Baghdad in 1952, studied journalism and has worked in the Iraqi press and radio. She moved to Paris in 1979 where she obtained a PhD and worked as a journalist. She is presently the Paris-based correspondent of Asharq Al-Awsat and Kol Al-Usra newspapers.She has published two non-fiction books, Lorna, her years with Jawad Selim (Arabic, Dar el-Jadid, Beirut, 1998), and Paroles d’Irakiennes (French, Le Serpent à Plumes, 2003), and in 2004 made a 30-minute documentary film about Naziha Al Dulaimi, the Iraqi doctor who, in 1959, was the first woman to become a minister in an Arab country.
Her debut novel Sawaqi al-Quloob [Streams of Hearts], was excerpted in the literary magazine Banipal 26 and published in 2005 by Al-Muassassa al-Arabiya lil-Nashr. Inaam Kachachi's latest novel, Al-Hafeeda al-Amreekiya [The American Grand-daughter], (Dar el-Jadid, 2008) is the story of a young American of Iraqi origin named Zeina who has left her country as an adolescent and returns to it as a translator with the US occupation forces.
The novel is also the story of Rahma, Zeina’s widowed grandmother, alone in Iraq after all her family have left the country. The novel was shortlisted for the 2008-09 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London in 1960 to a British mother and Sudanese father. He spent his early years in Khartoum before being awarded a scholarship to the Atlantic College in Wales and then went on to study Geology at Sheffield University. After returning briefly to Sudan in search of employment Jamal Mahjoub decided to dedicate himself to writing. Since then he has lived in a number of places, including London, Denmark and currently Spain.
He has worked as a librarian, freelance journalist and translator for Arabic, Danish and Catalan. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch and Turkish. Mahjoub identifies himself as a member of a group of young British novelists inspired by the ‘Empire Writes Back’ novelists of the older generation, such as Salman Rushdie.
While his first three novels offer telescopic histories of Sudan and focus on the critical point of the British occupation, his fourth, The Carrier (Phoenix House 1998), is a history of the telescope. Travelling With Djinns (Chatto & Windus 2003), his road novel of discovery and reconciliation, won the Prix de l’Astrolabe at the Etonnants Voyageurs Festival in France in 2004. Jamal Mahoub’s short story The Cartographer’s Angel won the Heinemann/Guardian African Short Story Prize in 1993. Another short story The Obituary Tango was shortlisted for the Caine Prize 2005. His two most recent novels are The Drift Latitudes (Chatto & Windus 2006) and Nubian Indigo (Actes Sud 2006).
Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England, where she studied for a Ph.D. at the University of Lancaster. She is married and lives in London and Cairo. The novelist, political and cultural commentator is the author of three collections of short stories, Aisha (Jonathan Cape 1983, Bloomsbury 2000), Sandpiper (Bloomsbury 1996) and I think of you (Bloomsbury 2007), and two novels: In the Eye of the Sun (Bloomsbury 1992), about a young Egyptian woman's life in Egypt and England, where she goes to study as a postgraduate, and which is set against key events in the history of modern Egypt; and The Map of Love (Bloomsbury 1999), the story of a love affair between an Englishwoman and an Egyptian nationalist set in Cairo in 1900. The Map of Love was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
Ahdaf Soueif is also co-editor of City of Light and Shadow (on Genoa and Liguria together with Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, and American photographer John Hall). In 2004, her book of non-fiction, Mezzaterra (Bloomsbury), was published: an incisive collection of essays on Arab identity, art, and politics that seeks to locate the mezzaterra, or common ground, in an increasingly globalized world. She was the winner of the first Mahmoud Darwish Award in 2010.
Soueif writes in both English and Arabic and has written various essays and reviews published in: Akhbar al-Adab, al-Arabi, Cosmopolitan, Granta, al-Hilal, al-Katibah, The London Magazine, The London Review of Books, New Society, Nisf al-Dunya, The Observer, Sabah al-Kheir, The Sunday Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement, Washington Post and others. She has also made a number of programmes for Arab, American and British television and radio stations. Egypt, British literature, sexual politics and the representation of the Arab world by the West are her passionate areas of concern.
Robin Yassin-Kassab was born in west London in 1969 to a Syrian father and an English mother. With the exception of six months in Beirut, he grew up in England and Scotland. He graduated from Oxford University and travelled extensively. He has lived and worked in London, France, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Robin Yassin-Kassab taught English around the Arab world as well as in Turkey and worked as a journalist in Pakistan before moving to Oman. He has recently returned to live in Scotland with his family.
Robin Yassin-Kassab was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award 2009 and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards 2008. His highly acclaimed first novel, The Road from Damascus (Hamish Hamilton 2008) is part multicultural family saga, part portrait of a marriage and part a novel of ideas. It is an extraordinary novel of love, religion and revolution. In his own words he himself describes the novel as addressing “….. problems of belief, immigration and belonging, and relationships”. It is set in multicultural London with a back story in Syria and Iraq.
Though not directly autobiographical in The Road From Damascus he and his protagonist, Sami, have been on journeys that share parallels. Robin Yassin-Kassab is currently working on his second novel. He is also a co-editor and regular contributor to PULSE, recently listed by Le Monde Diplomatique as one of its five favourite websites.
