The Flood Has Not Ended – Floating Words and 21st Century Displacement

A talk in the series "Poetographies: Literary Dialogues at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation" with Wagdy El Komy, an author born in Egypt who lives in exile in Switzerland. It centres on two short stories he recently published with Weiter Schreiben Schweiz, the platform for exiled authors in Switzerland, which take the myth of Noah's Ark and re-place it in the 21st-century context of Western Europe's asylum policies. Through this rewriting, El Komy raises questions about solidarity, ethics and belonging that hold a critical mirror to xenophobic discourses in Western Europe, including Switzerland. The evening also asks about the value of literature and storytelling as a way of resisting such discourses.