As the Pendulum Swings: Sweeping Modern Sagas

Exile, family ties and the search for belonging connect two novels spanning generations and national borders. Hannah Lillith Assadi and Rabih Alameddine discuss their work Saturday, November 21 at the Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus auditorium in downtown Miami, as part of Miami Book Fair. Assadi’s Paradiso 17 follows Sufien, born in Palestine in 1948 and forced from his home, through a life shaped by displacement, grief and the pursuit of joy. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, Assadi received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for her debut novel, Sonora. Her other work includes The Stars Are Not Yet Bells. Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction, centers on a 63-year-old philosophy teacher sharing a small Beirut apartment with his octogenarian mother. An invitation to a writing residency in America prompts Raja to revisit his life. Alameddine’s previous novels include the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning The Wrong End of the Telescope and An Unnecessary Woman. Author, poet and editor John Freeman joins the conversation. He and Alameddine co-edited The Penguin Book of the International…