Jamaluddin Aram shares his new essay collection about the beauty and suffering of Afghanistan.
AUTHOR EVENT DETAILS
10/20/2026 at 7pm
Toronto Public Library – North York Central Library
5120 Yonge St,
North York, ON M2N
About the Author:
JAMALUDDIN ARAM is an Afghan-Canadian writer. His short story “This Hard Easy Life” was a finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award in 2020. His debut novel, Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday, won the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Literary Fiction. He is the associate producer of the Oscar nominated film Buzkashi Boys. He lives in Toronto.
About the Book:
An exquisite debut collection on writing, exile, and rebuilding community after losing your homeland.
In elegantly written and meticulously observed essays including “Afghanistan, the Beautiful Land of Endless Suffering,” “The Blood of Things,” and “Small Memories,” Jamaluddin Aram examines the complexities of his place of birth and the demands of forging a career in writing. He explores themes such as displacement, ethnic discrimination, and exile, balanced by the lightness of memory, friendship, and hope. In prose that is at once highly political and deeply personal, Aram writes about “the terrible responsibility of war,” the fall of Kabul, and an account that connects his great-grandfather to the medieval Order of Assassins, and subverts entrenched portrayals of his people in popular culture, among other subjects, in a collection that is both sweeping and intimate, immersive and provocative, and which fully reveals his talent as an exciting new voice in nonfiction.
