Local Reads Book Club

Carolyn Souaid

TONIGHT: Local Reads Book Club showcases Montreal authors

A virtual event (at the moment).

Hosted by Montreal writer, advocate and public speaker Malek Yalaoui, the Drawn & Quarterly Local Reads Book Club (currently a virtual event, via Zoom) is showcasing Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaitikk by Carolyn Souaid. The novel is described as follows:

“A 23-year-old woman enters a whole new world of attraction in a community struggling with generations of loss of land and culture. Yasmeen’s tradition-bound mother wants her to stay in Montreal, get married and have babies. But the young Syrian-Canadian wants more. Her appetite for adventure leads her to a teaching job in the northern Quebec village of Saqijuvik. Eager to adopt her new home and its Inuit inhabitants, Yasmeen embraces every experience that comes her way: camping on the tundra, hunting for ptarmigan, sewing with the local ladies. She plunges into her northern adventure, no holds barred. But it’s 1983 and instead of the ideal, pristine Arctic Yasmeen imagined, she uncovers a contradictory world of igloos and pool halls, Sedna and Jesus, raw caribou and alcohol. In the middle of everything is Joanasi, a beautiful but volatile man who leads her into territory that is almost as unsettling as the land itself.”

The Local Reads Book Club is presented by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ) and the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) as well as Drawn & Quarterly.

For more details and the meeting ID and password, click here.


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