Virtual Talk
The Role of Fiction in Facing One’s Past

Conversation with Alice Zeniter and Omar El Akkad


Thursday, April 15, 2021
12:30pm ET
Online • In English

Meet Alice Zeniter and Omar El Akkad, two bestselling novelists who have used their work to explore ignored chapters in history, give voice to the disenfranchised, and challenge national myths.

In her bestselling book The Art of Losing, just released in an English translation by Frank Wynne, Alice Zeniter brings to light the inescapable legacies of French colonialism through the tale of a French-Algerian woman reckoning with her family’s secret past.

Meanwhile Canadian-Egyptian writer Omar El Akkad delves into contemporary issues such as geopolitical tensions and climate change in his first novel American War.

Together, Zeniter and El Akkad will discuss their creative process and share their intentions behind their work: helping us discover another way to look at the world and our own history. The conversation will be moderated by Anderson Tepper.

40 minutes with Q&A

Alice Zeniter

Alice Zeniter is a French novelist, translator, scriptwriter, and director.

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    • Her novel Take This Man was published in English by Europa Editions in 2011. Zeniter has won many awards for her work in France, including the Prix Littéraire de la Porte Dorée, the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, which was awarded to The Art of Losing. She lives in Brittany.

Omar El Akkad

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist.

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    • He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, which he covered around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff publications. His debut novel, American War (2017), is an international bestseller and has been translated into 13 languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize; it was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, and Esquire; and the BBC named it as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His short story “Government Slots” was selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2020 anthology. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, will be published by Knopf in July, 2021.

      Learn more at www.omarelakkad.com

Anderson Tepper

Anderson Tepper is a writer, a managing editor, a book reviewer and the host and curator of many literary events.

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    • Anderson Tepper is co-chair of the International Committee of the Brooklyn Book Festival and host of a global author series with BPL Presents at the Brooklyn Public Library. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, World Literature Today, and Words Without Borders, among other places.