Finding Humanity in Crisis: Rabih Alemeddine & Omar El Akkad
Originally aired on October 26
Re-release November 30
Sign up/in to register for this event
A big congratulations to Omar El Akkad on winning the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his book What Strange Paradise! To celebrate, check out this interview from #FestofAuthors21 with Omar and Rabih.
Award-winning authors Rabih Alemeddine and Omar El Akkad bring us two of the most heartwrenching accounts of the refugee experience in their critically acclaimed new books. Their stories of Syrian refugees arriving by boat in Greece uncover the real-life horrors faced by displaced people in search of safety. In Alemeddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope, Lebanese doctor Mina volunteers at a refugee camp where she meets Sumaiya, a Syrian mother secretly diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise, recently shortlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize, uncovers the journey of nine-year-old Amir, who finds unexpected support from a local girl while trying to reconnect with his community in a new land.
Interviewer: Danny Ramadan
English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.
