This award-winning Canadian novel is a vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration.

It’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She planned to work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, so she takes the only job she can find: as a hotline operator at a weight-loss centre.

All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines and on TV. On the phone, she’s Mona, and she’s quite good at listening. These strangers have so much to say once someone shows an interest in their lives – marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers, at the office Muna is privy to her clients’ deepest secrets.

Dimitri Nasrallah has written a vivid elegy to the years he first moved to Canada, bringing the era’s systemic challenges into the current moment through this deeply endearing portrait of struggle, perseverance, and bonding.

At this event the author will discuss his novel in English. Angela Spizig will translate parts of it into German. There will be readings in English and French. Angela Spizig, a former Vice Mayor of Cologne for Culture and International Relations, is a specialist in French-and English-language literature and an enthusiastic moderator at international literature and film festivals.

This event is part of our event series Amerikahaus Book Talks. 

Photo: Book Hotline ©private