A vast world in ten minutes • Najwa Barakat

Novelist, screenwriter, and journalist Najwa Barakat is one of the greatest voices in arabophone Lebanese literature. A champion of young Arabic authors, she holds writing workshops to promote the emergence of new talent.  Her novels, often set against memories of the civil war, treat several critical themes in contemporary Arab societies split between a form of obscurantism coerced by religious fundamentalism and a modernity ignorant of the wealth and beauty of history and language. Several of her books have been translated and published in France (Le bus des honnêtes gens, Oh, Salaam!, also translated into English; La langue du secret). Her novel Mister Noun will be published in French soon.