Conversation & Reading

<em>Hot Maroc</em>: Bilingual Reading with Moroccan Author, Yassin Adnan, & translator Alexander Elinson

Tue, Oct 7, 2025

6:00 PM–7:30 PM

Room C198, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC. Free and open to all. Registration required.

Thank you for joining us at this lively and engaging reading and conversation. Please enjoy some pictures from the event below.

Join Moroccan author, poet, and cultural journalist, Yassin Adnan, and translator, Alexander Elinson, as they read from and discuss Adnan’s first novel, Hot Maroc, which was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017. Hot Maroc is a vital portrait of the challenges Moroccans, young and old, face today in Morocco, where press freedoms are tightly controlled by government authorities, where the police spy on, intimidate, and detain citizens with impunity, and where adherence to traditional cultural icons both anchors and stifles creative production. For the young and voiceless, the anonymous online world provides an alternative space of freedom and self-expression. Yet it is also where hackers and trolls lurk in a dark space of corruption, scandal, and deception. Copies of the book will be available at the event.

About the Author

Yassin Adnan is a Moroccan writer, editor, and journalist. He is the editor of Marrakech Noir and the author of five books of poetry and three short story collections. He currently hosts the podcast “About Orientalism” on the London-based “Mujtama” platform. Previously, he researched and presented a weekly cultural TV program Masharef (Thresholds) on Morocco’s Channel One, and hosted Bayt Yassin (Yassin’s House) on Egypt’s Al-Ghad TV. Hot Maroc is his first novel and the first of his works to be translated into English.

About the Translator

Alexander E. Elinson is a professor of Arabic language and literature and head of the Arabic program at Hunter College, CUNY. He is the author of Looking Back at al-Andalus: The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature. His translations include two novels by Youssef Fadel (A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me and A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me), Hot Maroc by Yassin Adnan, History of Ash by Khadija Marouazi, The End of the Sahara by Saïd Khatibi, and The Fertility of Evil by Amara Lakhous.

About Hot Maroc

A dark comedy that shines a light on the struggles Moroccans face daily as they discover the virtual world of the internet.

With an infectious blend of humor, satire, and biting social commentary, Yassin Adnan provides a portrait of contemporary Morocco told through the eyes of the hapless Rahhal Laâouina, a.k.a. the Squirrel. Painfully shy, not that bright, and not all that popular, Rahhal somehow imagines himself a hero. With a useless degree in ancient Arabic poetry, he finds his calling in the online world, where he discovers email, YouTube, Facebook, and the news site Hot Maroc. Enamored of the internet and the thrill of anonymity it allows, Rahhal manages the Atlas Cubs Cyber Café, where patrons mingle virtually with politicians, journalists, hackers, and trolls. However, Rahhal soon finds himself mired in the dark side of the online world—one of corruption, scandal, and deception.

Longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017, Hot Maroc is a vital portrait of the challenges Moroccans, young and old, face today. Where press freedoms are tightly controlled by government authorities, where the police spy on, intimidate, and detain citizens with impunity, and where adherence to traditional cultural icons both anchors and stifles creative production, the online world provides an alternative for the young and voiceless. In this revolutionary novel that recalls Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Dave Eggers’s The Circle, Adnan fixes his lens on young Rahhal and his contemporaries as they navigate the perilous and changing landscape of the real and virtual worlds they inhabit.

This event is presented by the Center for the Humanities and the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center, and co-sponsored by the Arabic Program at Hunter College, CUNY.