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Past Events
28 April 2022
6.30pm-8.00pm
April Book Club on Zoom
6.30pm-8.00pm
April Book Club on Zoom
SLIPPING
by Egyptian author Mohamed Kheir
translated into English by Robin Moger, who is joining us for the session
published by Two Lines Press
NB: For this month only the meeting is moved to THURSDAY, instead of our usual Wednesday.
The book came out in June last year, and has been reviewed extensively. Click here to check out the Amazon link for some of the comments by reviewers. Looks like a very interesting book.
A struggling journalist named Seif is introduced to a former exile with an encyclopedic knowledge of Egypt’s obscure, magical places. Together, as explorer and guide, they step into the fragmented, elusive world the Arab Spring left behind. They trek to an affluent neighborhood where giant corpse flowers rain from the sky. They join an anonymous crowd in the dark, hallucinating together before a bare cave wall. They descend a set of stairs to the spot along the Nile River where, it’s been said, you can walk on water. But what begins as a fantastical excursion through a splintered nation quickly winds its way inward as Seif begins to piece together the trauma of his own past, including what happened to Alya, his lover with the remarkable ability to sing any sound: crashing waves, fluttering wings, a roaring inferno.
Musical and parabolic, Slipping seeks nothing less than to accept the world in all its mystery. An innovative novel that searches for meaning within the haze of trauma, it generously portrays the overlooked miracles of everyday life, and attempts to reconcile past failures—both personal and societal—with a daunting future. Delicately translated from Arabic by Robin Moger, this is a profound introduction to the imagination of Mohamed Kheir, one of the most exciting writers working in Egypt today.
SLIPPING is available in paperback and kindle.
The publisher Two Lines launched the book with a discussion, that you can listen to here: The author and translator in conversation with Yasmine el-Rashidi.
All welcome
Just email bookclub@banipal.co.uk to request the login details for this online Zoom event
If you have difficulty getting hold of a copy, please email us at bookclub@banipal.co.uk and we'll try to help.
An Iraqi in Paris by Samuel Shimon
The Cinderellas of Muscat by Huda Hamed (Banipal Books, 2025)
The Tent Generations
Things I Left Behind by Shada Mustafa, translated by Nancy Roberts
Shadow of the Sun by Taleb Alrefai
Birds of Nabaa, A Mauritanian Tale by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Mansi A Rare Man in His Own Way by Tayeb Saleh (Banipal Books, 2020)
Tayeb Salih
Goat Mountain by Habib Selmi
Habib Selmi, author of Goat Mountain and 3 times shortlisted for the IPAF
The Mariner by Taleb Alrefai (Banipal Books, 2020)
Taleb Alrefai, author of Shadow of the Sun and The Mariner
Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures by Fadhil al-Azzawi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Fadhil al-Azzawi
Poems of Alexandria and New York by Ahmed Morsi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
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Banipal Book Club
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