DIALOGUES

Belonging

Alberto Manguel in conversation with Isabel Huggan

21 Feb 2026

On her first visit to Lisbon, the Canadian writer Isabel Huggan will talk about Belonging, her award-winning memoir that deliberately includes elements of fiction. In it, Isabel shares her experience in Kenya, the Philippines and, later, in France, where she lived for 22 years before returning to Canada in 2020. In the conversation led by Manguel, themes such as the meaning of home and the importance of memory will be addressed.

ISABEL HUGGAN is an author  of short stories, essays and poetry, whose work has been internationally recognised over several decades. Her first book, The Elizabeth Stories, was translated into French, Spanish and Turkish. During part of her stay in Lisbon, the author will be staying at Casa Mísia, as part of the KEF Portugal Atelier programme.

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Read an excerpt from the book Belonging:

In the country where I now live, there is no word for home. You can express the idea at a slant, but you cannot say home. For a long time this disconcerted me, and I kept running up against the lack as if it were a rock in my path, worse than a pothole, worse than nothing. But at last I have habituated myself and can step around it, using variants such as notre foyer (our hearth) or notre maison (our house) when I mean to say home. More often, I use the concept chez to indicate physical location and the place where family resides, or the notion of a comfortable domestic space. However, if I wish to speak of “going home to Canada,” I can use mon pays (my country) but I can’t say I am going chez moi when I am not: for as long as I reside in France -- the rest of my life -- this is where I will be chez moi, making a home in a country and a language not my own. I am both home and not-home, one of those trick syllogisms I must solve by homemaking, at an age when I should have finished with all that bother.

Information

Belonging, with Alberto Manguel and Isabel Huggan 
Session in English 
21 February, at 5:30 pm 
Rua de Santa Catarina, 9, third floor 
Free admission. 
Subject to capacity