Synopses & Reviews
Raised on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux in 1970s Lebanon, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. As the bombs fell, she lived an adolescence of excess and transgression, defying death in nightclubs. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment by day of the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father's last wish is for his favorite song, "Sinnerman" by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral instead of the traditional suras of the Koran. When she does just that, the results are catastrophic.
In this dramatic true story, Darina Al-Joundi is defiantly passionate about living her life as a liberated woman, even if it means leaving everyone and everything behind.
Darina Al-Joundi was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1968. "The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing" is also the title of her critically acclaimed one-person show, which was performed in France, where she now lives as an actress, screenwriter, and filmmaker. She is planning a US tour of the show in 2011.
Review
"
The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing is an intense, harrowing, and deeply disturbing memoir of a woman's sustained resistance to the world around her.
Darina Al-Joundi's story of her family life and youthful extremity in Beirut, of war and its unspeakable violence, and of a culture that becomes increasingly intolerant and oppressive in the name of religion, especially of women, is told with such brutal immediacy, I found myself both moved and frightened. At once personal and historical, the book is the testament of an unrepentant rebel, who, in the end, has no choice but to leave everything and everyone behind her."—
Siri Hustvedt, author of
The Sorrows of an American and
The Shaking Woman, or a History of my Nerves"Darina Al-Joundi's personal liberation became a conquest when it coincided with the civil war in Lebanon. To a merciless world she brings a merciless book."—Etel Adnan, author of Sitt Marie Rose
"Born in Lebanon in 1968, Darina Al-Joundi came of age at the height of the Lebanese civil war. Her father initiated his three daughters into not only poetry and freedom of opinion, but alcohol, cigarettes, and erotic independence. By the time she reached her early twenties, she had held jobs ranging from TV actress to Red Cross worker, and had seen her native city bombed to oblivion. Al-Joundi's book reconstitutes the misadventures of her youth in a style that is at once heart-breaking and very funny."—Nancy Huston, author of Fault Lines
Synopsis
The Homeland actress's "recollections of her unconventional youth in war-torn Beirut are heartbreaking yet humorous . . . in this unique" memoir (Publishers Weekly).
Raised in 1970s Lebanon on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. She spent her adolescence defying death in Beirut nightclubs as bombs fell across the city. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment directed at her daily by the same men who would spend the night with her.
As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father's last wish is for his favorite song, "Sinnerman" by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral instead of the traditional suras of the Koran. When she does just that, the final act of defiance elicits a catastrophic response from her surviving family members.
In this dramatic true story, Darina Al-Joundi is defiantly passionate about living her life as a liberated woman, even if it means leaving everyone and everything behind in this "beautifully taut and relentlessly unemotional" memoir (Kirkus).
Synopsis
The wild ride of a young womans sexual rebellion in war-torn Beirut.
About the Author
Darina Al-Joundi: Darina Al-Joundi was born in Lebanon in 1968 to a Shiite Lebanese mother and a secular Syrian father. She began her acting career at age eight with Lebanese television. She left Beirut at thirty for Paris, where she wrote and performed
Le jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter for the theater. The play caused a sensation at the Avignon festival, where it was hailed by the critics all over France. Her latest movie,
Un homme perdu, by Daniel Arbid, was presented at the Directors Fortnight of the 2007 Cannes Festival.
Mohamed Kacimi: Mohammed Kacimi is an Algerian playwright and novelist. His writings include 1962, la Confession dAbraham, and Terre sainte.
Marjolijn de Jager: Marjolijn de Jager was born in Indonesia, raised in the Netherlands, and has been living in the US since 1958. She is a literary translator from French and Dutch to English, with a special interest in francophone African and Middle Eastern women writers. She has been awarded several NEH grants, a NEA translation grant, and is a Silver Winner of ForeWord Magazines Book of the Year Award (2007). She is retired from a 30-year career of teaching French language and literature, as well as literary translation at NYU, where she continues to teach Dutch and French language.