Day and Date: Thursday 10 September 2026
Start Time: 5.30 pm
Finish Time: 7.30 pm
Location: Parramatta Library Level 1 IDEAS Lab, 5 Parramatta Square, Parramatta NSW 2150
Cost: Free
Recommended Age: Adults
Join us for In Translation: A Book Club, where we explore The Book of Disappearance / سفر الإختفاء, an evocative and profoundly moving novel by Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem. Read the book in either the Arabic original or in the English translation by Sinan Antoon, and join the discussion facilitated by Oula Ghannoum. There will be readings in Arabic and English, as well as interpretation available for those who require it.
The event is presented by Lost In Books/Think+DO Tank Foundation as a part of Parramatta's Lit! This session is also supported by the Parramatta Library. In Translation: A Book Club is a program funded by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
About the author
Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, based in New York. She was born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in 1948 Nakba. She lived in Jerusalem before moving to Germany and later to the US. She works as a senior correspondent for the Arabic newspaper, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, in New York. She has published two novels in Arabic: The Sleep Thief (2011) and The Book of Disappearance (2014). Her first short story collection, City of Strangers, is forthcoming in Arabic in the summer of 2025. The Book of Disappearance has been translated into English, Italian, and German, and is forthcoming in Portuguese and Polish.
About the translator
Antoon holds degrees from Baghdad, Georgetown, and Harvard, where he specialised in Arabic literature. He has published five novels and two poetry collections. His most recent work is Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull, 2023). His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 American Literary Translators’ Award. He is an associate professor at New York University.
Sinan Antoon on his translation: “I choose works that I find exceptionally powerful and haunting and that I feel must be shared. I read The Book of Disappearance once Ibtisam finished writing it when it was still an unpublished manuscript in Arabic. I was stunned by its beauty and told her that I wanted to translate it as soon as I had the time”.
About the facilitator
Oula Ghannoum, Professor of Plant Biology at Western Sydney University, bridges science and art. An expert on photosynthesis, she leads a multidisciplinary team addressing food security under climate change. Drawn to Sufism, Oula is a passionate poet and storyteller in Arabic and English. She co-edited a bilingual anthology on Arab Australian women migration (Don’t ask the Trees for their Names) and is working on a project weaving memory and truth telling.