Dimitri Nasrallah | A unique perspective on immigration

In the Mordecai-Richler reading room where we meet him, at Concordia University, the writer and professor Dimitri Nasrallah is surrounded by emblems of Montreal – personal belongings of the author of the Barney’s world strewn across his old wooden desk are caricatures and period photos alongside whole rows of books – while the large windows offer us an unobstructed view of the mural depicting Leonard Cohen and downtown Montreal, the setting for his new novel.

Hotline recounts the first months in Montreal of Muna, a Lebanese newly arrived in the country with her 8-year-old son, Omar; We are in 1986, the civil war is still wreaking havoc in Lebanon, and any return to the past is now impossible for them.

It is Muna who gives voice to the challenges they encounter as they face their first Quebec winter; their renunciations, the sacrifices they see themselves forced to make, their loneliness, their feeling of being invisible in this very city where the writer of Lebanese origin, who is also professor of creative writing at Concordia and editor at Vehicle Press , landed with his family in 1988, aged 11, before moving to Ontario. It was in Montreal, moreover, that he chose to return to live, more than 20 years ago, to devote himself to writing; and where he set the scene for his second novel, the unforgettable and moving Nico – which evokes immigration in a completely different way.

However, from this darkness that crosses Nicowe find no trace in Hotline. Because the one who wrote it is no longer the same. “I started writing Nico at the age of 25 and I finished it at 31. This is the book where I really came to terms with everything that had happened. He forced me to look back and there was a lot of anger [par rapport au passé] “, he says with vivacity.

“When I wrote Hotline [au début de la pandémie], I was already in my forties, I had become a father. I found myself confined like everyone else and started writing around 3,000 words a day for 40 days, only to end up with a 40,000 word document that revolved around my mother. »

He then realizes that he had never written about her. Then, one thing leading to another, Muna somehow becomes the personification of her mother’s spirit, he explains. Like her, Muna was a French teacher in Lebanon; but once in Quebec, she encounters closed doors when she tries to find a job in her field, to finally resign herself to accepting a job selling health food boxes over the phone.

A transformative novel

Since its publication in English a year ago, Hotline has not gone unnoticed, like its three previous titles which have earned it several distinctions: last fall, this fourth novel by Dimitri Nasrallah found itself in the first selection of the prestigious Giller Prize, before be selected in January as one of the five titles in CBC’s Book Fight, Canada Reads (whose winner will be announced in March).

” After Nico And The Bleeds [son troisième roman], I realized that I was writing very dark novels; but I didn’t feel like a dark person. Then I realized that I wanted to write something a little more optimistic. It required me to take a step back from this childhood anger,” he admits.

“I wanted to write this book to kind of tell my mother that I understand; that I now see how complex the challenges she had to overcome at the time were; and that even though I don’t express it in person, I’m grateful for everything she’s done,” he says.

When asked if his immigration experience will continue to inform 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 to have on this journey, so it’s not something that was relegated to childhood and closed the door on,” he concludes.

Hotline

Dimitri Nasrallah (translated from English by Daniel Grenier)

The People

376 pages