Hoda Barakat was a guest of Chiasso Letteraria 2016: Seconda classe, in Italy, and was interviewed by Stefano Montefiori, for La Lettura, Corriere della Sera, April 24th, 2016. Below, excerpts of a summary of this conversation, published on the blog imago 2.0.
Hoda Barakat, a Lebanese writer, after a period of great participation in events and discussions on the Arab world and its alleged features, decided to thin out her appearances in public, especially in the literary events currently focusing on the relationship between Europe and Islam in her second home, France.

By Guido Caldion, for Il Manifesto, published on November 15h, 2015
Hoda Barakat is among the most famous and brilliant Lebanese authors. She has lived in Paris for the past thirty years, at Place de la République, the epicentre of the terrorist attack that hit the French capital. Deeply knowledgeable about the works of Marcel Proust and Robert Musil, but also about the Arab poets of the ninth and tenth centuries, Barakat investigates the symbols and history of the Middle Eastern countries, returning to the crisis in that part of the world…
Born in 1952 in Beirut to a Christian …

Jabbour Douaihy’s novel “June rain” was acquired by Turner Libros. It was published this week.
June rain was published in French (Actes Sud), English (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation), Italian (Feltrinelli), German (Hanser), and will appear in Turkish soon. Visit the book’s page on this website.

Only the narrative of horror seems to cancel the cultural diversity among the most impermeable Western civilisation and the Arab one

Mostafa Khalifa’s is a scream from the silence of the prisons of the regime, a cry to be heard with the hope of freeing the future.

Mostafa Khalifa’s book is not only a complaint, but also bitter reflection on the horrors of which humans are guilty.