"Half Truth" with Nadia Mahjouri, in conversation with Anna Johnston

Event Description

Nadia Mahjouri is a Moroccan Australian writer, counsellor, and group facilitator specialising in maternal mental health. She is also the host of "The Whole Truth: Motherhood and the Writing Life". In this podcast, Nadia interviews authors about how they manage to keep writing while living in the messy middle of family life, work and creativity. Joining Nadia in conversation will be Anna Johnston, who, like her 2024 debut novel "The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife" is utterly charming and a delight to spend time with.

Nadia and her husband live in Hobart/nipaluna with varying combinations of their family which includes three young adults, two school-aged children and a black labrador puppy called Russell Sprout.

"Half Truth" is her debut novel and is a moving drama charting families, motherhood and loss, identity and belonging.

A daughter searches for her father; a mother for her son. From isolated Tasmania to vibrant Morocco, two women seek the truth about what happened to the same man.

Khadija is packing up her home of fifty years. In her box of special things are the last reminders she has of her son, Ahmed, missing for more than twenty years. Her belongings take her back to her village childhood, her marriage and move to Marrakech.

In Tasmania, Zahra is in the throes of new motherhood and desperate for answers about her own identity. She decides to take her baby to Morocco and search for the father she has never known. There she finds an extensive loving family and a culture ready to embrace her, but no father.

Zahra and Khadija’s stories collide – giving Khadija the power to move on, and Zahra the courage to embrace her identity as a mother and a mixed-race woman, ready to create a fulfilling life for her son and herself.

Event Partner

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/half-truth-9781761344558