Tuesday, June 10, 2025
3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (GMT+01:00) Rome
Location: Villa Malta (Rome) La Sala
A great number of writers from Russia, China, and India, as well as postcolonial Africa and Latin America, have been forced into permanent exile in the West. How does loss of homeland, and the suffering it entails, provide insight into the contemporary human condition–a widespread state of self-alienation and social and other divisions? Does a focus on personal experience promote a literature light on political commitments and engagement or can it, in new ways, build bridges and "human fraternity" (Pope Francis)?
Participants
Jennifer Szalai
Jennifer Szalai has been the nonfiction critic for the New York Times since 2018. She was previously an editor at the New York Times Book Review, assigning reviews of both fiction and nonfiction. She has written for various publications, including Harper’s Magazine, the Economist, and the London Review of Books. Before joining the New York Times in 2012, she was a senior editor at Harper’s, where she was in charge of the reviews section. She has degrees from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics.
Ece Temelkuran
Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish novelist, a political thinker, and a leading analyst of the erosion of democracy and the challenge of populism on a global scale. Her most recent book, Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now (2021)—a compelling case for (secular) faith as a driver of solidarity and transformative change—follows closely on her acclaimed How to Lose a Country. The Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship (2019). Temelkuran’s two previous books explored the Turkish-Armenian divide and Turkey’s cultural and political crises. Her novels are published in several languages. A frequent contributor to the Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde, and other leading outlets, she is the recipient…
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, explores themes of exile, identity, and belonging. Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo, and has lived most of his life in London. His memoir The Return (2016) received a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is also the author of In the Country of Men (2007), shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Anatomy of a Disappearance (2011); and A Month in Siena (2019). His most recent novel, My Friends (2024), won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2024, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated…
Accessibility
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