Cairo, 2013. Since the General took the reins of Egypt, the capital has been under curfew. By seven o’clock in the evening, the streets of the city center have grown empty, and soldiers have been deployed around Tahrir Square, as local residents lock themselves inside their homes. What was once the neighborhood of uprising during the Arab Spring suddenly falls silent. It is at that moment that Ali goes out into the street to paint graffiti against the General, attempting to avoid the police on patrol. One night, plainclothes officers catch him red-handed while doing his work and begin to chase him. Suddenly, right when he is about to be arrested, he hears the voice of an old man coming out of an alley, offering him shelter.

The author, whose novel won the twenty-fourth Unicaja Fernando Quiñones Novel Award, will be speaking with Bárbara Azaola, a professor with the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the School of Humanities in Toledo (UCLM). The dramatized reading will be performed by the actor Marco Magoa. The event will be presented by Karim Hauser, coordinator of Casa Árabe’s Cultural Programs.

You can watch the event live on YouTube.

Rocío Lardinois (1970) has a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies At the age of twenty, she fell in love with Cairo, which led her to quit her job at a European agency, settle in that city and end up experiencing the Arab Spring. After her stay in the Egyptian capital, she returned to Madrid to work with Amnesty International writing literary journalism articles on human rights violations in Egypt, a task which she has combined with international consultancy on vocational training. “Los chicos tuertos” (“The One-Eyed Kids”) is her first novel.