Please join us for an informal conversation with author Anissa M. Bouziane. Anissa was born in Tennessee, daughter of a Moroccan father and a French mother. She grew up in Morocco, but returned to the US to attend Wellesley College, and went on to earn an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. Her debut novel, Dune Song, is rooted in her experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers. She now works and teaches in Paris.

“I came to the Sahara to be buried.”

After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center, Jeehan Nathaar leaves her New York life with her sense of identity fractured and her American dream destroyed. She returns to Morocco to make her home with a family that’s not her own. Healed by their kindness but caught up in their troubles, Jeehan struggles to move beyond the pain and confusion of September 11th. On this desiccated landscape, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, the Dune sings of death, love, and forgiveness.

Recorded 26 May 2020