Diaspora Dialogues: In conversation with Kamal Al-Solaylee & Tamas Dobozy
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Join Kamal Al-Solaylee and Tamas Dobozy for an in-depth conversation of their newest books, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come and Ghost Geographies: Fictions, exploring
Event Details
Join Kamal Al-Solaylee and Tamas Dobozy for an in-depth conversation of their newest books, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come and Ghost Geographies: Fictions, exploring culture and environment. Al-Solaylee’s book is for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to return to their roots, and Dobozy’s is a collection that depicts the afterlife of utopia.
Moderated by author Thea Lim. Presented by Diaspora Dialogues.
Books featured:
- Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From by Kamal Al-Solaylee (ebook / hardcover)
- Ghost Geographies: Fictions by Tamas Dobozy (paperback)
Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come
HarperCollins
In Return, Kamal Al-Solaylee interviews dozens of people who have chosen to or long to return to their homelands, from the Basques to the Irish to the Taiwanese. He makes a return of sorts himself, to the Middle East, visiting Israel and the West Bank as well as Egypt to meet up with his sisters. Return is a chronicle of love and loss, of global reach and personal desires. It sets the narrative of going home against geopolitical forces that are likely to shape the rest of this century and beyond.
Ghost Geographies: Fictions
New Star Books
A wry, propulsive, visceral collection of stories about the afterlives of utopia, imagined and real, from the author of the Writers’ Trust Prize-winning Siege 13.
Fleeing communist Budapest by air balloon, a wrestler tries to reinvent himself in Canada. On a formal invitation from the Party’s General Secretary, a Belgian bureaucrat “defects” to communist Hungary, chasing the dream of a better world. Meanwhile, a provocateur filmmaker drinks and blasts his way to a final, celluloid confrontation with fascism, while an enfant terrible philosopher works on his prophetic, posthumously panned masterpiece, Dyschrony. These are among the decadent and absurd characters who hover around the promise and failure of utopia across the pages of Ghost Geographies.