Bernard MacLaverty and Atef Abu Siaf
ONE of the most intriguing events of the MLF’s packed programme of events in central Manchester this weekend is the pairing of Palestinian writer Atef Abu Saif and Belfast born Bernard MacLaverty.
‘I think the very act of writing itself is political…when you write, you’re trying to say something about the human condition…a way of trying to make sense of a difficult world’
Both writers use their writings to capture the details of life under the threat of violence. MacLaverty began writing when he was in late 20s, married with children, as his ‘world blew up’ when the Northern Irish troubles erupted into real and unpredictable violence. He writes with a direct simplicity and an unapologetically gleeful use of the vernacular.
This has led to more than one interviewer to ask him to explain terms such as ‘your man’ and ‘catch yourself on’, but his defense of using the local and specific to capture the universal rings true. His stories deal with the effects of conflict on the everyday, detailing the impact of violence on the people left to live with the aftermaths.
‘She said to him that Gaza likes scandal, and that people’s tongues spread rumours like rain on a sloping street.’
Atef Abu Saif was born in the Jabaia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1973. He writes, like MacLaverty, about domestic life under violence and questioned identities, using brief lyrical fragments of prose to capture physical and emotional details. He appears courtesy of Literature Across Frontiers, which aims to advance European cultural exchange and dialogue.
For anyone interested in literature of conflict, this is an essential event.
Saturday, October 24, 2009, 3pm to 4pm
Friends Meeting House
For ticket information visit the link to the right of the page
Published: Sat, 24 October, 2009
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