We are very excited to welcome you all to the Premiere of "Fear eats Ali" written by Edwin Nasr, in conversation with Edna Bonhomme.
The novel follows Ali, a self-denigrating Catholic and unruly homosexual who immigrated to Berlin almost a decade ago from southern Lebanon, who stands accused of assaulting a police officer during a Palestine solidarity demonstration. Caught in a suspended present as he faces possible deportation from Germany, Ali prepares to bid his goodbyes to a city in ebullition. The many people in his life pierce through the dense fog of days: Francesco, an Italian ex-boyfriend afflicted with the malady of hope; Samira, his tenacious confidante and the bearer of her Syrian community’s burdens; and, somewhere far away, his father Karim, who took arms with the communists against the Israeli occupation in the 1980s. There are also the Germans, and the beast that slumbers in them—who knows what it remains capable of. Carried by tragic humor and political reckoning, Fear Eats Ali is a forthright novel about the time and place of resistance, the debt one carries in its wake, and the helplessness of men in the face of immense historical transformations.
Thursday 12th November at 20:00. Doors open at 19:30
She said Bookstore, Kottbusser Damm 79 10967 Berlin
Edwin Nasr was born in 1994 in Haret Sakher, Lebanon. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. His writings on politics and contemporary art have been published in Bidoun, n+1, Afterall Journal, The Funambulist, Mousse Magazine, and Mada Masr, among others. He is the Senior Editor of Palestine is everywhere (TBA21, Silver Press and the87press, 2025) and translates from French to English for different publications.
Edna Bonhomme is a critic, journalist, and historian of science. She is finalist for the 2026 Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle and has received awards from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Robert Silvers Foundation. She earned a PhD in History of Science from Princeton University in 2017 and has taught courses at Humboldt Universität, Freie Universität, and the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Her books include After Sex (Silver Press, 2023), A History of the World in Six Plagues (Simon&Schuster, 2025), which was shortlisted for Austria's Best Science Book Award. Her most recent book, Tending to Our Wounds, was published with Haymarket Books in July 2026. She lives in Berlin.
We have an amount of solidarity tickets, please write to events@shesaid.de in case you´d like one <3
