10-12 OCTOBER 2025
The Palace of the Higher Hill
18:30
Honored Literature - PRESENTATION
With Karim Kattan
📖 The author, Karim Kattan, speaks about a dark tale of exile, desire, and the indestructible memory of homeland.
Faisal returns to Palestine to unravel his family’s secrets and to rediscover, in a place undergoing violent change, his lost self.
Organized by Nicosia Book Fest, the French Institute of Cyprus, and the Embassy of France
ABOUT THE BOOK
Faisal, a thirty-year-old Palestinian, receives a mysterious death announcement. Who is the deceased Aunt Rita? Succumbing to his curiosity, he leaves behind his lover and his life in Europe and returns to Jabalayn, the village where he was born. As he wanders through the abandoned mansion of his childhood, the ancestral past emerges vivid and laden with secrets, while the looming threat of his homeland’s impending annexation by enemy forces hangs over him.
BRIEF CV
Karim Kattan is a writer and PhD in comparative literature. In French, he has published the collection of short stories Préliminaires pour un verger futur (2017) and the novel Le Palais des deux collines (2021), both by Éditions Elyzad (Tunis).
His texts in English have been published in important international publications such as The Paris Review , Strange Horizons , The Maine Review , +972 Magazine , The Funambulist , etc.
His work has been presented at international cultural events, such as the French Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), the 12th São Paulo Architecture Biennale, and the MMAG Foundation.
At the same time, he is the creator and host of the show Midnight Ocean , which is broadcast live every Friday at midnight on the online radio station Radio alHara.