Speaking Through the Night: Diary of a Lockdown, March-April 2020

Isolating in Nogent-sur-Marne, Wajdi Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Through Kafka and Star Wars, by way of French phonetics and the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, he explores the razor’s edge of madness, conjures a dream shared by all humanity, and probes the bestiality of our everyday lives.

Mouawad’s plays, novels, and essays speak to us all, confronting our ghosts, addressing the obscure and the impenetrable, which dissipate as they are put into words. The musings in Speaking through the Night, born out of solitude, confront the mysteries of the universe with supple introspection.

Over the past twenty years, Wajdi Mouawad has risen to fame in Canada and internationally, acclaimed for the power of his writing and the originality of his vision as a theatre director. He is the author of an epic quartet for the stage, The Blood of Promises (Tideline, Scorched, Forests, Heavens), and two novels, Visage retrouvé and Anima, which won numerous prizes. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and his plays have been produced around the world. In 2016, he was named artistic director of La Colline - Théâtre national in Paris.