October 13: Elias Khoury in conversation with Robyn Creswell

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Elias Khoury and Robyn Creswell will discuss the current situation in Beirut. They will also speak about Khoury's most recent translated work of fiction, Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam (Translated from Arabic by Humphrey Davies and Published by Archipelago Books, 2020).

The live event will stream directly on this page on Tuesday, October 13 at 5pm ET. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be posted shortly afterwards. During the broadcast, please email your questions to evan@192books.com.

Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam. By Elias Khoury. Translated from Arabic by Humphrey Davies and Published by Archipelago Books, 2020.

Long exiled in New York, Palestinian ex-pat Adam Dannoun thought he knew himself. But an encounter with Blind Mahmoud, a father figure from his childhood, changes everything. As he investigates exactly what occurred in 1948 in Lydda, the city of his birth, he gathers stories that speak to his people’s bravery, ingenuity, and resolve in the face of unimaginable hardship.

Elias Khoury

Elias Khoury, born in Beirut, is the author of thirteen novels, four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. He was awarded the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, which was named Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and a Notable Book by The New York Times. Khoury’s Yalo, White Masks, Little Mountain, The Journey of Little Gandhi, and City Gates are also available in English. Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at New York University, and has taught at Columbia University, the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the Lebanese American University. As Though She Were Sleeping received France’s inaugural Arabic Novel Prize. Read Elias Khoury's “This is not Beirut,” courtesy of the Paris Review.

Robyn Creswell

Robyn Creswell is Assistant Professor of Comparative literature at Yale University. His research focuses on poetic modernisms in English, French, and Arabic. Other fields of interest include the intellectual history of the modern Middle East, theories and practices of translation, and contemporary poetry. Creswell is the translator of Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Clash of Images (New Directions, 2010) and The Tongue of Adam (New Directions, 2016), as well as Sonallah Ibrahim’s That Smell and Notes from Prison (New Directions, 2013). His essays and reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review. Purchase his title, City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut (Princeton University Press, 2019) here.