Join us in Edinburgh to celebrate No God but Us, the debut novel by Bobuq Sayed. Bobuq will be joined in conversation by Mohamed Tonsy.

‘Compassionate without veering into sentimentality, the novel explores migration, identity and chosen family with quiet emotional precision, asking what it truly means to build a home from exile.’ — Service95

When Delbar’s double life is outed to his mother, he flees his Afghan American community and takes refuge with his aunt in Istanbul. There he meets another Afghan, Mansur, who has made his own sacrifices to leave his family in Iran and migrate to Turkey.

At an NGO supporting queer and trans refugees, Delbar and Mansur find comfort in each other and the company of new friends. But Turkish state repression is escalating, and as their pathways to security diverge, the fault lines between them become impossible to ignore.

Bobuq Sayed is an Afghan cultural worker whose writing explores themes of migration, Islam and queer sexuality. They are the author of A Brief History of Australian Terror, a chapbook of essays, and the co-editor of Nothing to Hide: Voices from Trans and Gender Diverse Australia. A 2022–23 Steinbeck fellow at San José State University, a Lambda Literary scholar, and an award-winning James A. Michener fellow in the University of Miami’s MFA programme in creative writing, Bobuq lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Mohamed Tonsy is a queer Egyptian writer and ceramicist. Formerly an architect and a triathlete representing the Egyptian Triathlon Federation, he completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. His writing has appeared in Mizna and Epoch Press and was shortlisted for MFest’s 2021 Short Story Competition. He is the author of You Must Believe in Spring.

Visit the Lighthouse website to book a ticket.