The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing

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 Director’s Fortnight of the 2007 Cannes Festival.Mohammed Kacimi is an Algerian playwright and novelist. His writings include 1962, la Confession d’Abraham, and Terre sainte.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 Magazine’s 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.

The wild ride of a young woman’s sexual rebellion in war-torn Beirut.