Hardcover: 232 pages
Publisher: Seagull Books (2006)
Language: English

Artist meets writer; young woman meets older man; daughter meets father.  All these encounters are played out in the arresting conversations between the artist Ninar Esper (b. 1971) and the father she hardly knew, the Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis (b. 1930).  Esber passionately challenges Adonis on subjects ranging from fundamentalism to animal rights, from feminism to aesthetics; Adonis responds with amusement and judicious wisdom, not concealing the contradictions of a patriarchal humanist libertarian.  On Esber’s side, the poignancy of growing up without a father becomes a drama with Oedipal overtones.

This intensely personal two-hander is at the same time representative of many contemporary displacements.  Comparing their experiences of war, exile and cultural rootlessness, two individuals differently marked by Middle Eastern history seek a common ground in Paris.  An intimate, uncensored, ultimately unresolved search for communication and forgiveness.