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Lamia Ziadé presents My Great Arab Melancholy (Pluto Press, 2024), in conversation with Claire Launchbury.

Award-winning visual artist and storyteller Lamia Ziadé will discuss her experiences in writing My Great Arab Melancholy, an illustrated chronicle of the modern Arab world, combining travelogue, memoir, history and gorgeous full-colour art.

She explores the major thinkers, struggles and turning points that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today. The story begins in South Lebanon, ‘land of martyrs, ruins and passion’, before taking the reader further afield, to Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo and Baghdad. The book moves from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, tracing the Arab world’s tragedies and the derailing of dreams and possibilities caused in large part by Western imperialism.

In this talk, Lamia will also focus on how the themes of the book are playing out in the Middle East today, with a focus on current events in Palestine. She will also discuss her artistic process and methods of research.

Lamia Ziadé is a Lebanese author, illustrator and visual artist. Born in Beirut in 1968 and raised during the Lebanese Civil War, she moved to Paris at 18 to study graphic arts. She then worked as a designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier, exhibited her art in numerous galleries internationally, and went on to publish several illustrated books, including My Port of Beirut (also available in English), Ma très grande mélancolie arabe which won the Prix France-Liban, Ô nuit, ô mes yeux and Bye bye Babylone.

Claire Launchbury has taught at universities in France, UK, Ireland and Australia with research focusing on issues of memory and justice in postwar Lebanon. Her published work ranges from French poetry to Lebanon’s bus network via auto-ethnographic work on class, race and representation at Grenfell. She is currently Teaching Fellow in Communication, Media and Culture at Oxford Brookes University.

This event is hosted as part of our bookshop programme, and co-presented with Pluto Press.

Images: Courtesy of Pluto Press.