Local Reads Book Club – The Philistine

Discover and discuss books written and published in Quebec at our newest book club, Local Reads.

The club is hosted by Malek Yalaoui.
A Montreal-based writer, advocate and public speaker, Malek Yalaoui has been called many things but the most frequent of these is “force to be reckoned with.”

For our next meeting, November 18th, we’ll be reading The Philistine by Leila Marshy. Presented by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ) and The Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF)

Where and How Can I purchase the book? Our webstore is here:
http://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/posts/webstore-faq
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By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. Your support is appreciated.

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THE PHILISTINE

Nadia Eid doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to change her life. It’s the end of the ’80s and she hasn’t seen her Palestinian father since he left Montreal years ago to take a job in Egypt, promising to bring her with him. But now she’s twenty-five and he’s missing in action, so she takes matters into her own hands. Booking a short vacation from her boring job and Québecois boyfriend, she calls her father from the Nile Hilton in downtown Cairo. But nothing goes as planned and, stumbling around, Nadia wanders into an art gallery where she meets Manal, a young Egyptian artist who becomes first her guide and then her lover. Through this unexpected relationship, Nadia rediscovers her roots, her language, and her ambitions, as her father demonstrates the unavoidable destiny of becoming a Philistine – the Arabic word for Palestinian. With Manal’s career poised to take off and her father’s secret life revealed, the First Intifada erupts across the border. Nadia needs to decide what all this has to do with her.