4th of March 2024
Doors at 6.30 - 9pm Finish
Join us for an evening of discussion of Shady Lewis' book On the Greenwich Line.
I was riveted and charmed by this funny, humane and poignant novel. It’s written in a voice that is as ardent as it is sensitive, one marked by history and yet managing to remain beautifully unruly and independent.’
– Hisham Matar, author of My Friends and The Return
In an East London housing office, a frustrated local government employee spends his days trying to figure out what the latest policy announcement means for both himself and the migrants he works with every day. As a favour to a friend, he finds himself roped into organizing the funeral of Ghiyath, a young Syrian refugee. But it is not until his life collides with Ghiyath’s death that he realises just how much he has in common with those who’ve fallen through the cracks.
Told with a wry cynicism and deadpan wit, On the Greenwich Line traces the absurdities of racism, austerity, and bureaucracy in contemporary England. This is a story about systemic failure and human courage, and about London and its many lost souls.
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Shady Lewis, born 1978, is an Egyptian novelist and journalist whose writing centres on cultural and political intersections within and beyond the Arab world. He lives in London, where he has spent many years employed by the National Health Service and local authority housing departments. He has published three novels in Arabic to date, as well as a travel diary. On the Greenwich Line has also been translated into German, French and Italian; the French translation was shortlisted for the 2023 Prix de la littérature arabe.
Katharine Halls is an Arabic-to-English translator from Cardiff, Wales. Her critically acclaimed translation of Ahmed Naji’s prison memoir Rotten Evidence was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, she was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim grant for her translation of Haytham El-Wardany’s Things That Can’t Be Fixed and her translation, with Adam Talib, of Raja Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace received the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award. She is one third of teneleven, an agency for contemporary Arabic literature.
Keiran Goddard is a writer and social commentator. He is the author of Strings (2013), For The Chorus (2016) Votive (2019), Hourglass (2022) and I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (2024). His books and articles have been published internationally and he writes regularly for the Guardian.