Reviews

Review: Rover Arts

November 22, 2011

"Niko is tragic, spirited, resilient and very affecting, " writes Martyn Bryant. "Economic with words and avoiding much embellished language, the novel’s arc is finely crafted and gallops along."

Interview: Uptown Magazine

November 17, 2011

"After years of drafts, Dimitri Nssrallah's second novel, Niko, is ready to grip readers, " writes Quentin Mills-Fenn.

Review: Broken Pencil

October 1, 2011

Reviewer Olga Kidisevic writes, "I was taken aback by Nasrallah's ability to infuse every scene, act and thought with emotion."

Review: Underground Book Club Blog

September 2, 2011

A novel of immigration. A narrative that transacts with Canada, but it is not about Canada. A novel that explores multiculturalism, but it is not bound by Trudeau- or even Mulroney-era pieties. A novel about the New Quebec that doesn't mention nationalism (or at least Quebecois nationalism). A novel of immigration that speaks to the world. ...Niko is a lovely novel and a significant achievement by a young writer with much to say.

Review: The Globe & Mail

July 20, 2011

"Nasrallah possesses superb powers of description. With a few deft strokes, he delivers a character’s essence and motivations. His idiosyncratically scarred landscapes shimmer in exotic hues."

Blog: Thin Air, Winnipieg International Writers Festival

July 6, 2011

Dimitri Nasrallah is no stranger to civil war. He was born in Lebanon in 1977 as the country was rife with opposition and discontent, and it was the only environment he knew as a young child. In 1981, his family went into exile, living in Athens, Kuwait and Dubai before immigrating to Canada in 1988.

Interview: CBC Radio 3

May 2011

This past May, Niko was featured on CBC Radio 3 as the Book of the Month. Apart from long threads of online discussion about the book, I sat down for an interview with Vish Khanna to answer reader questions.

Feature: Montreal Review of Books

Spring 2011

"The pleasure of reading Niko comes from more than just its fast pace. In this novel, Nasrallah has created complete worlds that you carry around in your head after you put the book down, worlds to which you want to return. What makes these settings so enticing is the way they are built up around the characters. ...we are in the hands of a master storyteller."

Review: Maisonneuve

Issue 40, Summer 2011

Nasrallah mostly circumvents rehashed, pedantic tales of immigration and childhood. His prose catapults the eager reader into Niko’s conflicted world.

Feature: Nightlife.ca

April 2011

"Montreal author Dimitri Nasrallah, who won the McAuslan First Book Award for his 2005 debut novel Blackbodying, returns to Blue Metropolis this year with another sobering and sophisticated meditation on the exile experience."

Review: Drawn & Quarterly

April 27, 2011

"Niko is one of the best 2011 novels I've read, and it is an epic, sweeping story about war and family and loss that really conveys the agony of exile, and also makes that suffering comprehensible on a really intimate level."

Review: Montreal Hour

April 7, 2011

Niko, local author Dimitri Nasrallah’s second novel, begins with a normal domestic tableau – or at least as much normalcy and domesticity as the protagonist’s family can muster in a city torn apart by war. Young Niko, six years old, is a restless kid in an apartment above his dad’s camera shop in Beirut.