Groupe de lecture “Mahmoud ou la montée des eaux” d’Antoine Wauters

Once a month, the reading group meets up to discuss a couple of books selected in advance (from classical to contemporary French literature) and discovers other members’ views on them. Meetings are taking place at the Institut français d’Ecosse, usually on the last Tuesday of the month.

About the book :

Syria. An old man rows aboard a boat, alone in the middle of a huge expanse of water. Below him, his childhood home, engulfed by Lake el-Assad, born from the construction of the Tabqa dam, in 1973. Closing his eyes to the rumbling war, equipped with a mask and a snorkel, he plunges – and it is his whole life that he sees again, his children at the time when they had not yet left to fight, Sarah, his mad wife in love with poetry, prison, his first love, his thirst for freedom.