Discussants:
Elias Khoury
(Beirut / Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2016/17)
Sinan Antoon
(New York University / EUME Fellow 2008/09 / Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2016/17)
Chair:
Friederike Pannewick
(Philipps-Universität Marburg / EUME)
The Poetics and Politics of the Body in Pain: Violence and Death in the Novels of Elias Khoury and Sinan Antoon
Elias Khoury & Sinan Antoon (both Fellows of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), Chair: Friederike Pannewick (Philipps-Universität Marburg / EUME)
Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin
Abstract:
This session will present the novelists Elias Khoury and Sinan Antoon with two of their novels, both dealing with the harrowing everyday presence of violence, pain and death in Lebanon and Iraq. Both, Antoon’s “Wahdaha shajarat al-rumman” (ar. 2010)/ “The Corpse Washer” (engl. 2013) and “Yalo” (ar. 2002, engl. 2008) by Khoury touch upon the complex relationship between art and violence in the context of civil war, sectarianism and occupation. The relationship between the literary text and reality is continuously being subjected to reevaluation, both by writers themselves as well as in scholarly analysis. In Arabic literature, the risk of committed literature of being employed to cover affirmative positions vis-à-vis hegemonic discourses and leading political doctrines has been at the heart of heated public debate since the 1940s. Literature’s potential to conceal or reveal social injustice and political persecution or torture has been judged quite controversially. This session is going to critically reflect on these issues in a panel discussion with two leading authors of modern Arabic literature.
Reviews of “Yalo” in:
Die Zeit
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Guardian
The New York Times
Reviews of “The Corpse Washer” in:
Banipal
The National
Portrait of Sinan Antoon in:
The Guardian