Canadian author Éric Chacour’s writing reads more like poetry than prose. In his award-winning debut novel What I Know About You, he reimagines the tragic tale of Romeo and Juliet through the character of Tarek, a Levantine Egyptian man living in 1980s Cairo whose life is turned upside down by a fateful encounter. For Chacour, writing is the medium he uses to translate a wide-ranging passion for the arts that also includes music and theatre. “I always say I wrote a novel because I couldn’t play the piano,” he says.

Born in Montréal to Egyptian parents who migrated to Canada in the late 1960s, Chacour grew up hearing stories about the community they had left behind. “They were part of a small Syro-Lebanese community in Cairo. They were Christian and often learned French before learning Arabic. It was a bubble within Egyptian society.” 

Setting his novel in late 20th century Cairo allowed Chacour to dive deeper into his heritage. “Writing this book was a way to connect my parents’ Egypt with the very different Egypt I saw when I visited many years later for Christmas or summer holidays,” he says. His father’s job also took the family between Montréal and Paris. 

It was as a teenager that he discovered his passion for literature through writing song lyrics. The words of singer-songwriters such as French artist Jean-Jacques Goldman and Belgian poet Jacques Brel made their way into his novel. “I recently re-listened to ‘Le Coureur’, a Goldman song I hadn’t heard in a long time and stopped when I heard his lyric, ‘Je suis étranger partout’ [I’m a stranger everywhere],” he says. “It’s a central theme in my book and I realised that’s where I probably got the idea for it.”

Originally written in French, his debut novel received accolades from the Francophone literary world, including the Prix des Libraires (awarded by booksellers), the Prix Femina des Lycéens (an accolade given by a jury comprising only adolescents) and most recently the Prix France-Québec, a Canadian literary award. The novel has been translated into 15 languages. 

For Chacour, collaborating with the translators was a process of rediscovering his own work. “It forced me to verbalise my intentions, some of which had been purely subconscious,” he says. “My English translator would pick two sentences from the original text and would notice similar structures such as the same number of syllables and rhyming words. There’s a distinctive poetic construction that I hadn’t fully realised existed.” The English version earning a shortlist nomination for the 2024 Giller Prize, a Canadian award for English language fiction, is a testament to the translator’s success in conveying not only the words but the melody of Chacour’s story. 

Most recently, What I Know AboutYou has been picked up for a theatre adaptation in Québec with Canadian artistic director Olivier Arteau taking on the task of bringing the author’s words to the stage. For Chacour, this new translation is the occasion to explore another dimension of his novel, mixing different art forms to create an even more meaningful experience. 

It’s also an opportunity to settle back in Québec after a year touring the world to promote his book – and tackle his second novel. “I’m ready to go back to the solitude of my keyboard,” he says. “For a lot of authors, writing is a painful thing. For me, it’s a soothing process.”