Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life with Samar Yazbek and translator Leri Price

About this event

Join us for an evening with Syrian writer, journalist and campaigner Samar Yazbek and her translator Leri Price as they discuss their new book Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life, a Fitzcarraldo book sharing 26 accounts from Gazan civilians in the aftermath of October 7. The title, ‘Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life’, is adapted from one of the flyers dropped on the residents of Gaza minutes before a bombing.

Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each one about their experience on October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like since that pivotal date. She has selected twenty-six of these narratives to share with the world. Yazbek captures the raw, chilling accounts of ordinary civilians aged thirteen to sixty-five, who have witnessed what history may one day remember as one of the most savage military offensives of our time. Their stories reveal a nightmarish dystopia, where each
survivor has endured unimaginable loss – homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated – and many have been treated in hospitals ravaged by Israeli attacks. But these survivors remain determined to share their stories, and cling to the hope that their voices will resonate.

Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist. She was born in 1970 and studied Arabic literature at Latakia University. Yazbek has been a prominent advocate for human rights and more specifically women’s rights in Syria. In 2011, she took part in the popular uprising against the Assad regime and was forced into exile soon after.

In 2010, Yazbek was selected as one of the thirty-nine most promising authors under the age of 40 by Beirut39, organized by the Hay Festival. In 2012 she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize ‘International writer of courage’ for her book In the Crossfire, and received the Swedish Tucholsky Prize and the Dutch Oxfam/PEN Prize the following year. In 2022, Yazbek was chosen by the Royal Society of Literature as one of twelve International Writers.

Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. She was a Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024, 2021, and 2019. Her
translation of Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work also won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

Samar Yazbek and Leri Price will be in conversation with Farheen Khan