Norbert Bugeja, who lectures within the University’s Department of English, recently addressed the seventh annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture hosted by the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK.

Bugeja was invited by the University of Warwick to introduce this year’s guest speaker, the distinguished Palestinian writer, essayist and poet Mourid Barghouti, whose autobiographical narrative I Saw Ramallah was published by Bloomsbury in 2004 to international acclaim.

Barghouti has been awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

The Edward Said Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture of international distinction held in memory of the late Edward Said, author of Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, among several other influential works.

Past speakers include Tariq Ali, Timothy Brennan, Ahdaf Soueif, Declan Kiberd and Gilbert Achcar.

Bugeja spoke of the conditions of unpredictability, irony and uncertainty that have shaped Barghouti’s experience as an exiled writer.

Barghouti discussed, among other aspects, the role of the paradigms of laughter and poetry in the ousting of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, as well as the significance of the Arab Spring, and the profound significance of the ‘Republic of Tahrir’ for current and future communities in the Arab world.

The event was co-ordinated by distinguished scholar Rashmi Varma, a professor within the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, whose latest book, The Postcolonial City and its Subjects, will be published by Routledge next month.