The Saladin Days 2014 Dominique Eddé and Karim Miské
The first time? The first time was in Cairo, at the Fahmihs’ house in Garden City.
Dominique Eddé’s novel Kite is a fragmented story about the privileged lives led in an Egyptian-Lebanese community from before the Lebanese civil war erupts and until the present day. Mali and Farid first meet in Cairo, after which their lives are marked by war and politics. Eddé has also written the novel Kamal Jann about a protagonist who is a successful businessman with a Syrian background who learns that his brother is heading for Paris to carry out a terrorist attack. A blood-soaked family history is gradually revealed.
After twenty years as a documentary filmmaker, Karim Miské has written his first novel, Arab Jazz. The setting is a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Paris where a Jewish woman is found murdered. Could the homicide be religiously motivated?
Eddé was the French editor of Said’s Orientalism. Does she believe that Said’s thinking concerning the ‘other’ has influenced her own fiction writing? And what do she and Miské think about writing novels where major political issues affect ordinary people’s lives and where such lives become entangled with religious conflict, war and bloodied hands? Ellen Svendsen, a philosopher and political science scholar, will lead the conversation, which will take place in French with simultaneous translation into Norwegian.
Litteraturhuset Wergeland