Ian Bassingthwaighte

Harvard Book Store and GrubStreet welcome award-winning writer IAN BASSINGTHWAIGHTE and The Signal Flame author ANDREW KRIVÁK for a discussion of Bassingthwaighte's debut novel, Live from Cairo.

About Live from Cairo

From a hugely talented, award-winning young author, a brilliant, lively debut novel about an impulsive American attorney, a methodical Egyptian translator, and a disillusioned Iraqi-American resettlement officer trying to protect a refugee who finds herself trapped in Cairo during the turbulent aftermath of the January 25 revolution.

Cairo, 2011. President Mubarak has just been ousted from power. The oldest city in the world is reeling from political revolution, its consequent hopes and fears, its violence, triumphs, and defeats. But for the people actually living there, daily life has not slowed down but become wilder, more dangerous, and, occasionally, freeing.

Live from Cairo is the exuberant, dazzling story of these people: Dalia, a strong-willed Iraqi refugee who finds herself trapped in Egypt after her petition to resettle in America with her husband is denied. Charlie, her foolhardy attorney, whose frustration with the legal bureaucracy and complicated feelings for Dalia have led him to forge a not entirely legal plan to get her out. Aos, Charlie’s fastidious translator and only friend, who spends his days trying to help people through the system and his nights in Tahrir Square protesting against it. And Hana, a young and disenchanted Iraqi-American resettlement officer; she is the worker assigned to Dalia’s case, deciding whether to treat her plight as merely one more piece of paperwork, or as a full-blooded human crisis. As these individuals come together, a plot is formed to help Dalia. But soon laws are broken, friendships and marriages are tested, and lives are risked—all in an effort to protect one person from the dangerous sweep of an unjust world.

A vibrant portrait of a city in all its teeming chaos and glory, Live from Cairo is an exhilarating, electrifying debut, and a stunning testament to the unconquerable desire of people to rise above tragedy to seek love, friendship, humor, and joy.

Praise

"A moving—and startlingly funny—novel about the global refugee crisis and all of the people caught up in a bureaucracy of human suffering. Bassingthwaighte finds the tragedy and absurdity in trying to be humane within an inhumane system. An ambitious debut from an exciting new voice." —Brit Bennett, New York Times–bestselling author of The Mothers

"My favorite thing about this book is the focus on love—love for country, for self, for mothers, for brothers, for each other. That at the heart of this novel is the deep, aching love between an Arab woman and an Arab man gives me goosebumps. We need this book. We need it on every shelf." —Randa Jarrar, Arab-American Book Award-winning author of A Map of Home

"Live from Cairo is a powerful novel about human lives running up against inhuman systems: an impotent bureaucracy, a corrupt government, a brutal military. It’s a story of triumphant love and heartbreaking injustice, a story about how difficult the world makes it for any one person to do the right thing. Ian Bassingthwaighte has written an important and necessary book." —Nathan Hill, New York Times–bestselling author of The Nix