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BOOK TALK: Fire in Every Direction
Books will be for sale at the event from Oxford bookshop, Gulp Fiction (gulpfictionbooks.com).
Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, ‘Fire in Every Direction’ balances humour and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness – desire and resistance – is passed down through generations.
In 1948, Tareq’s grandmother would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, as the country was in the throes of a civil war. In Amman, the family would eventually obtain the comfort of middle-class life – still, a young Tareq would feel trapped: by cultures of silence, by a sense of not belonging, by his own growing awareness that he is in love with his childhood best friend, Ramzi.
After relocating to London, Tareq hopes to put aside his past. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him.
Living between the region and London, Tareq fits in neither and feels alienated from both. Queerness is policed back in Amman, just as his Palestinian-ness is abroad. These gradual estrangements escalate, forcing him to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, and rethink the meaning of home.
www.hachette.co.uk/titles/tareq-baconi/fire-in-every-direction/9781399739634
Date:
24 February 2026, 17:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Investcorp Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Tareq Baconi (Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network)
Organising department:
Middle East Centre
Organiser:
Middle East Centre Administrator (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
mec@sant.ox.ac.uk
Hosts:
Dr Ammar Azzouz (Somerville College, University of Oxford),
Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Part of:
Book Talks
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
FREE
Audience:
Public
Editors:
Caroline Davis,
Jennie Williams
