Bard College Presents Nuruddin Farah in Conversation with Mark Danner on November 17
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Human Rights Project at Bard College presents a public conversation between Nuruddin Farah and Mark Danner to discuss Farah’s new critically acclaimed novel Hiding in Plain Sight. Farah, who just won a Lifetime Achievement Literary Award from the South African Literary Awards, has been hailed as “the most important African novelist to emerge in the past twenty-five years” by The New York Review of Books. This event will take place on Monday, November 17, from 6 pm to 7:30 pm in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.Hiding in Plain Sight is a profound exploration of the tensions between freedom and obligation, the ways gender and sexual preference define us, and the unexpected paths by which the political disrupts the personal. BBC.com says, “Farah’s powerful story of a shattered family makes vivid the human repercussions of political chaos and violence.” The Washington Post writes, “A rich exploration of political and social crises . . . [and] a sensitive story about living in the shadow of grief, learning to forgive and trying to answer the question, ‘What does it mean to be Somali in this day and age?’”
Nuruddin Farah is the author of 11 previous novels, including From a Crooked Rib, Links, and his Blood in the Sun trilogy: Maps, Gifts, and Secrets. His novels have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, “widely regarded as the most prestigious international literary award after the Nobel” (New York Times). Born in Baidoa, Somalia, he lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he is Distinguished Professor of Literature at Bard College.
Mark Danner is a writer and reporter who for 25 years has written about politics and foreign affairs, focusing on war and conflict. He has covered, among many other stories, wars and political turmoil in Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the Middle East, and, most recently, the story of torture during the War on Terror. Among his books are Torture and the Forever War (forthcoming, 2014), Stripping Bare the Body (2009), The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History (2006), Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (2004), The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter’s Travels through the 2000 Florida Vote Recount (2004), and The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (1994). Danner is James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College and Chancellor’s Professor of Journalism and English at the University of California, Berkeley.
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CAPTION INFO: Nuruddin Farah and Mark Danner to discuss Farah’s new critically acclaimed novel Hiding in Plain Sight at Bard College on November 17.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jeffrey Wilson
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