VIDEO:Mazen Maarouf Writers are Like Bells

“Every writer tries to do the best in his own time,” Palestinian-Icelandic writer Mazen Maarouf reflects in this short, but concise interview. “I imagine writers like bells in a way. Time is made out of points, it is not continuous, it is like moments, and then every writer is like this bell that is ringing like crazy. We try to question, or try to explain what’s going on around us”.

Mazen Maarouf (b. 1978) is a Palestinian-Icelandic writer, poet, journalist, and one of the foremost translators of Icelandic literature into Arabic. Maarouf has published three collections of poetry: ‘Our Grief Resembles Bread’ (2000), ‘The Camera Doesn’t Capture Birds’ (2004, 2010), and ‘An Angel Suspended on a Clothesline’ (2012). His short story collection ‘Jokes for the Gunmen’ (2019) was nominated for the International Man Booker Prize and won the prestigious Al-Mutaqa Prize. Maarouf lives between Reykjavik and Beirut.

Mazen Maarouf, Writers are Like BellsI, Interview by Steen Nørskov in August 2019 in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, Camera: Klaus Elmer, Edited by Klaus Elmer, Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020, Supported by Nordea-fonden