Positive Solace with Attika Choudhary

Women beyond War with Iman Humaydan

Attika Choudhary Episode 5

In this week’s episode of Positive Solace: Women of Vision – 'Women beyond War' - Attika speaks with Iman Humaydan, an award-winning Lebanese writer who says she uses words to alleviate her pain: her pain from the devastating civil war that ended in 1990: her pain for the disintegration of her beloved Lebanon; her pain for women trying to operate in a man's world where men write all the rules.


She puts into her fiction, which is close to fact, all her own experiences and those of other Lebanese women. Her hard-hitting and eye-opening novels concern the struggles of womanhood, family, loss, as well as the bitter consequences of war. Iman's perspective is unique as revealed through her characters.


Iman talks about how writing has been a cathartic, cleansing experience for her, and helped her cope with the post-war problems and social adversity: it seems even in our modern age many people in Lebanon oppose women taking power for themselves.

Iman talks of motherhood and her job teaching in Paris and how she divides her life between a Lebanon struggling to rise from the ashes and the ancient, cultural city of Paris, which ironically, has recently known its own violence.


You can find a selection of Iman’s works here:

‘The Weight of Paradise’ - www.interlinkbooks.com/product/weight-of-paradise-the/

‘Wild Mulberries’ - www.interlinkbooks.com/product/wild-mulberries/

‘Other Lives’ - www.interlinkbooks.com/product/other-lives/


Iman Humaydan is a co founder of Pen Lebanon and its current president. For Lebanese writers link here: https://penlebanon.org/index.php/about/


This week Attika is also joined by guest presenter, James Ward, a young aspiring writer and Positive Solace’s assistant producer.


With thanks to the Positive Solace Team. Don’t forget to subscribe to never miss an episode


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