"Between Beirut and the Moon" - AJ Naddaff in conversation with author, Naji Bakhti
A conversation with author Naji Bakhti, moderated by AJ Naddaf.
Tuesday, March 30
7:00 - 8:00 pm Amman | 12:00 - 1:00 pm New York
Register here
Between Beirut and the Moon is the exuberant and hilarious debut from the hugely talented young Lebanese author, Naji Bakhti. A young boy comes of age within the confines of post-civil-war Beirut with conflict and comedy lurking round every corner. Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut but who has ever heard of an Arab on the moon? He battles with his father, a book-hoarding journalist with a penchant for writing eulogies, his closest friend, Basil, a Druze who is said to worship goats and believe in reincarnation, and a host of other misfits and miscreants in a city attempting recover from years of political and military violence. Adam’s youth oscillates from laugh out loud escapades, to near death encounters, as he struggles to understand the turbulent and elusive city he calls home.
Speakers:
Naji Bakhti, born and raised in Beirut, graduated from the American University of Beirut (Lebanon, 2011). He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Westminster (2012) and a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. His words have been published in The Guardian and the New Statesman among others and he has been interviewed by The National, The London Magazine, and the Middle East Eye. Between Beirut and the Moon (Influx Press, 2020) is his first novel.
AJ Naddaff is an American-Belgian-Lebanese multimedia journalist and translator. He is pursuing a two-year master’s in Arabic literature and Near Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut, where he works as a teaching assistant. He holds a B.A. in political science and Arab Studies from Davidson College, and completed the Arabic fellowship (CASA) in Cairo last year. AJ's journalism work has appeared in the LARB, The Washington Post, the Intercept, Columbia Journalism Review, Middle East Eye, the New Arab, World Politics Review, among other outlets. Most recently, he published a translation of Palestinian-Syrian scriptwriter Hassan Samy Yusuf’s 2016 book Threshold of Pain (IBEX publishers) alongside Nick Lobo and Rebecca Joubin.