In this week’s episode, we are visited by the acclaimed author Amer Sarsour and have a really great author conversation. Amer is an established poet and musician who made his novel debut this spring with the magical “While we burn”! He has carried the story with him for ten years.
The novel is a gripping and exciting story about twenty-three-year-old Omar, who has taken on an important mission to help his father. He will go down to southern Italy and pick up his cousins. The year is 2013, they have fled the burning Syria, crossed the sea and made it to Europe. Now Omar will help them the last bit of the way, home to the safety of Sweden. But the journey turns out to be more difficult than he thought.
It becomes a conversation about how to become a trustworthy person and the search for the shape of a story. Amer talks about finding his novel character’s unique voice, with the help of landmarks in Uppsala. What is the difference between self-actualization and meaning-making? Is it possible to talk about politics with emotions, why would expectations be bad and how can one understand Sweden on a human level? Can the struggle that hurts so much be written beautifully? And how damn big is Europe?
FRIDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2024