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Meeting with the writer Amin Maalouf
From October 09, 2012 until October 22, 2012
On the event of the publishing in Spanish of the long awaited novel The Disoriented, Casa Árabe and Alianza Editorial launched this meeting with its writer, on Monday October 22nd at Casa Árabe’s Auditorium in Madrid.
During the event the writer was accompanied by Milagros Hernando, Spanish Ambassador to Lebanon, and Eduardo López Busquets, director general of Casa Árabe, and it took place at 19.30, with free entrance limited by space availability.
The Disoriented is probably Amin Maaoluf’s most personal and emotive piece of work; the one which condenses his personality and his way of thinking. It is the key to the ideas which he has expressed in his works. The literary «return» to his homeland, an undetermined place, a non-place which turns into a universal reflection of friendship, love, memory, exile, identity and the need to build bridges between Orient and Occident, a matter always present on his writing.
On his pieces of work, the writer has said: «I have had, for long, the obsessive feeling that the world I belong to is blurring day a day, and that it may disappear even though I am still alive. My novel is born out of this feeling. In The Disoriented, I was inspired by the greater freedom of my youth. I spent it with my friends who believed in a better world. Even if none of the book characters matches a real person, none is entirely fiction. I have drunk from my own dreams, ghosts, remorse, as well as from my memories.
It is true that his homeland is one of those who call for nostalgia. A place of clashes as well as of coexistence of different religious and cultural traditions, one of intellectual and political richness during his university years, from then on it has undergone periods of armed conflicts which have altered its character and created that image of a world that is vanishing away. Some people still think that their existence has no sense but there, in that country of delicate balances; others feel that they are already out of place, and that they just can come back there to pass through.
Is that unnamed country the same I spent my youth years in? Yes and no. Undoubtedly I have taken it as a model, but trying to search precise references to places and dates will be in vain. Nevertheless, what I have just said is not only an explanation with the benefit of hindsight. The truth is that I have not felt for a moment that I should call that country by its name. It is undoubtedly a revealing fact of the complex feelings which it still inspires in me. And it will inspire me until the end of my days. »
Amin Maalouf
He was born in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1949, in the bosom of a Catholic Arab family. Son to Ruchdi Maalouf, poet, painter and journalist, he studied Economics, Politics and Sociology and, following the traditional family path, he became journalist. He worked for the newspaper An Nahar as chief of the international section and he travelled through countries such as India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Yemen and Algeria, sometimes as war correspondent. In Vietnam he witnessed the battle of Saigon. In 1975, after the Lebanon war started and like some of his own book characters, Maalouf also became an exile in France, where he has lived then on and where for a while he was journalist in magazines such as Jeune Afrique and An-nahar Arabe et International.
Currently he is uniquely focused on literature and lives periods of the year in a fisherman’s house in the Channel Islands, where he writes his novels. His texts have been translated into more than twenty languages. Most of Maalouf’s books are developed within a historical framework and in them he combines historical facts with fantasy and philosophical concepts. His texts are written with the ability of a true narration master, they offer a refined sensible vision of the values and attitudes from the different cultures in the Middle East, Africa and the Mediterranean world.
Amin Maalouf has been awarded the Maison de Presse prize for his novel Samarkand and the Goncourt one for Rock of Tanios. Both were published by Alianza Editorial in 1989 and 1994, respectively, along with the rest of his work: Leo Africanus (1989), The Cruzades Through Arab Eyes (1989), The Gardens of Light (1991), The First Century after Beatrice (1993), Ports of Call (1997), In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1999), Balthasar’s Odyssey (2000), Love from Afar (2002) Origins: A Memoir (2004) and Le Dérèglement du monde. Quand nos civilisations s’épuisent (2009). In 2010 he received the Prince of Asturias Award laureate for Letters for his work and he has recently been elected as a member of the French Academy.
The Disoriented is probably Amin Maaoluf’s most personal and emotive piece of work; the one which condenses his personality and his way of thinking. It is the key to the ideas which he has expressed in his works. The literary «return» to his homeland, an undetermined place, a non-place which turns into a universal reflection of friendship, love, memory, exile, identity and the need to build bridges between Orient and Occident, a matter always present on his writing.
On his pieces of work, the writer has said: «I have had, for long, the obsessive feeling that the world I belong to is blurring day a day, and that it may disappear even though I am still alive. My novel is born out of this feeling. In The Disoriented, I was inspired by the greater freedom of my youth. I spent it with my friends who believed in a better world. Even if none of the book characters matches a real person, none is entirely fiction. I have drunk from my own dreams, ghosts, remorse, as well as from my memories.
It is true that his homeland is one of those who call for nostalgia. A place of clashes as well as of coexistence of different religious and cultural traditions, one of intellectual and political richness during his university years, from then on it has undergone periods of armed conflicts which have altered its character and created that image of a world that is vanishing away. Some people still think that their existence has no sense but there, in that country of delicate balances; others feel that they are already out of place, and that they just can come back there to pass through.
Is that unnamed country the same I spent my youth years in? Yes and no. Undoubtedly I have taken it as a model, but trying to search precise references to places and dates will be in vain. Nevertheless, what I have just said is not only an explanation with the benefit of hindsight. The truth is that I have not felt for a moment that I should call that country by its name. It is undoubtedly a revealing fact of the complex feelings which it still inspires in me. And it will inspire me until the end of my days. »
Amin Maalouf
He was born in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1949, in the bosom of a Catholic Arab family. Son to Ruchdi Maalouf, poet, painter and journalist, he studied Economics, Politics and Sociology and, following the traditional family path, he became journalist. He worked for the newspaper An Nahar as chief of the international section and he travelled through countries such as India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Yemen and Algeria, sometimes as war correspondent. In Vietnam he witnessed the battle of Saigon. In 1975, after the Lebanon war started and like some of his own book characters, Maalouf also became an exile in France, where he has lived then on and where for a while he was journalist in magazines such as Jeune Afrique and An-nahar Arabe et International.
Currently he is uniquely focused on literature and lives periods of the year in a fisherman’s house in the Channel Islands, where he writes his novels. His texts have been translated into more than twenty languages. Most of Maalouf’s books are developed within a historical framework and in them he combines historical facts with fantasy and philosophical concepts. His texts are written with the ability of a true narration master, they offer a refined sensible vision of the values and attitudes from the different cultures in the Middle East, Africa and the Mediterranean world.
Amin Maalouf has been awarded the Maison de Presse prize for his novel Samarkand and the Goncourt one for Rock of Tanios. Both were published by Alianza Editorial in 1989 and 1994, respectively, along with the rest of his work: Leo Africanus (1989), The Cruzades Through Arab Eyes (1989), The Gardens of Light (1991), The First Century after Beatrice (1993), Ports of Call (1997), In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1999), Balthasar’s Odyssey (2000), Love from Afar (2002) Origins: A Memoir (2004) and Le Dérèglement du monde. Quand nos civilisations s’épuisent (2009). In 2010 he received the Prince of Asturias Award laureate for Letters for his work and he has recently been elected as a member of the French Academy.
