In the Mordecai Richler Reading Room where we meet him, at Concordia University, writer and professor Dimitri Nasrallah is surrounded by emblems of Montreal – personal belongings of the author of Barney’s World scattered on his old wooden desk, next to it Caricatures and historical photos for entire rows of books – while the large windows offer us a breathtaking view of the mural depicting Leonard Cohen and downtown Montreal, the setting of his new novel.
Posted at 12:00 p.m
Hotline tells of the first months in Montreal by Muna, a Lebanese woman who has just arrived in the country with her 8-year-old son Omar; The year is 1986, the civil war is still raging in Lebanon and it is impossible for them to return to the past.
It is Muna who expresses the challenges they face in their first winter in Quebec; their renunciation, the sacrifices they are forced to make, their loneliness, their feeling of being invisible in this very city where the writer of Lebanese origin, who is also a professor of creative writing at Concordia and editor at Vehicle Press, landed with his family in 1988 at the age of 11 before moving to Ontario. Also, more than 20 years ago, he decided to return to Montreal to pursue writing. and where he framed his second novel, the unforgettable and moving Niko – which evokes immigration in a very different way.
But in Hotline we find no trace of the darkness that pervades Niko. Because whoever wrote it isn’t the same anymore. “I started writing Niko when I was 25 and finished when I was 31. This is the book where I really processed everything that happened. He made me look back and there was a lot of anger [par rapport au passé] ‘ he says briskly.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Dimitri Nasrallah surrounded by Mordecai Richler’s personal effects in the room named after him at Concordia University
“When I wrote Hotline [au début de la pandémie]I was already in my forties, I had become a father. I found myself locked down like everyone else and started writing about 3,000 words a day for 40 days only to end up with a 40,000 word document centered on my mother. »
Then he realizes that he had never written about her. Then, one thing leads to another, Muna somehow becomes the embodiment of her mother’s spirit, he explains. Like her, Muna was a French teacher in Lebanon; But once in Quebec, she encounters closed doors as she tries to find a job in her field, only to eventually settle for taking a job selling organic boxes over the phone.
A transformative novel
Since its publication in English a year ago, Hotline has not gone unnoticed, as have its three previous titles, which have brought it several awards: last autumn, this fourth novel by Dimitri Nasrallah was in the first selection of the prestigious Giller Prize before it was selected in January from among the five titles in the Battle of Books by CBC, Canada Reads (whose winner will be announced in March).
“After Niko and Les Bleed [son troisième roman], I realized that I wrote very dark novels; but I didn’t feel like a dark person. Then I realized I wanted to write something more optimistic. I had to take a step back from that childish rage,” he admits.
Anger can take you far. But eventually I realized that she had taken me far enough, far enough that she was starting to hurt and cause problems in other areas of my life. And maybe because I’m writing, I was able to deal with what was happening. And it’s partly this transformation that worked with Hotline: I couldn’t run from anger anymore.
Dimitri Nasrallah
“I wanted to write this book to tell my mother that I understand; that I now see how complex the challenges she faced at the time were; and while I don’t put it personally, I’m grateful for everything she’s done,” he says.
When asked if his immigration experience will continue to influence his writing, he answers without hesitation. “I never really know what’s going to happen until I sit down to write. But it’s not like identity travel is a done deal at this point just because I’ve covered it in these books. I feel like the older I get the more perspective I get on this journey, so it’s not something that was relegated to childhood and locked the door,” he concludes.
hotline
Dimitri Nasrallah (translated from English by Daniel Grenier)
The human
376 pages