John and Ben return to the historical novel on this week's episode of The Infinite Library. We tackle British-Palestinian novelist Isabella Hammad's 2019 debut: The Parisian: a book that, much like its protagonist and the country he hails from, is curiously divided. We discuss the novelist as national representative, the perils of tying your family history directly into your fiction, "MFA writing", and the tides of history.
As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation.
Disclaimer: Contrary to what we may appear to be, Ben and John are very dumb. If we mispronounced anything in French or Arabic over the course of this episode; please, please, please don't be mean to us.