Antoine Douaihy – ‘Drowning in Lake Morez’

From the International Prize for Arabic Fiction official biography and book description:

Antoine Douaihy is a Lebanese novelist and poet, born in 1948. He completed his higher education in Paris, gaining a doctorate in Anthropology from the Sorbonne in 1979, and remaining in France until the mid-nineties. He currently works as Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at The Lebanese University. His novels include: TheBook of the Current State (1993), The Garden of Dawn (1999), Hierarchies of Absence (2000), Royal Solitude (2001),Crossing Over Rubble (2003) and The Bearer of the Purple Rose (2013), which was longlisted for the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Drowning in Lake Morez is the story of a couple separated by culture and place. When the narrator, a Lebanese man, falls in love with a French woman, they begin a passionate affair. However their relationship, punctuated by separation, is fraught with difficulties and they struggle to make it work even when they are together. Looking at the larger issue of displacement, the book explores how – in our transitory, modern lifestyle – people often feel caught between different worlds.