Nasri Atallah was born and grew up in London, United Kingdom, where he attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle. His parents, Samir Atallah and May Francis, are both British-Lebanese and were living in London at the time. His father, Samir Atallah, is a prominent Arab author, journalist and thinker, and the winner of many awards for his decades of contribution to Arab literature. Atallah moved to Beirut for the first time in 1997, finished school and read politics at the American University of Beirut. He then headed back to London to study for a Masters in International politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, completing a dissertation on the Deterritorialization of Identity Through Transnational Media. After some further back and forth, he now resides in Paris, France.
Career
After his studies, Atallah worked at the United Nations Development Programme for 6 months, on the Arab Human Development Report, before joining Energy Intelligence, a company specialised in oil & gas research, when he was an analyst and writer. In 2007, he joined the wealth management firmUBS in London, before quitting in 2009 to concentrate on creative pursuits. During a brief stint at JWT as a conceptual copywriter, Atallah kept a blog entitled Our Man in Beirut which earned him notoriety amongst the Lebanese community both in Lebanon and abroad. His often scathing criticism of social mores earned him both fans and detractors. The blog’s success led to a publishing deal with Turning Point books, and the print version was released in December 2011 in Beirut, with book signings at Waterstones in London and at the Salon Du Livre de Paris. From 2011 to 2017, Atallah worked at Keeward, a creative agency that accompanies and creates projects in the fields of media and technology. Through a joint-venture with the company, he founded Bookwitty-Keeward's Artist-in-Residence program, Gate37, in 2014. It has focussed on artists with a cross-cultural approach to music and storytelling, such as The Wanton Bishops, Lumi and Wake Island. From 2016 to 2017, he was Head of Media Partnerships for rapidly-growing book discovery platform Bookwitty. According to press interviews, Atallah has a second book in the works. While it was supposed to be a fictional revenge fantasy about the excesses of London’s Eurotrash subculture in the mid to late 2000s, Atallah's focus has shifted to a Beirut-based crime novel. In 2017 he joined the acclaimed Faber Academy to complete work on the novel. Since 2018, he has been working full-time on writing and creative projects, including co-developing and hosting a documentary series about the Arab world. He is represented by United Agents.
Books
A Lost Summer: Postcards From Lebanon, Saqi Books, 2008
Our Man in Beirut, Turning Point Books, 2011
Share This Book, SHARE Foundation, 2013, Independently Published
Beyrouth, Chroniques et détours by Mashallah News and AMI Collective, Tamyras, 2014
Music Management
From September 2012, Atallah launched the career of the prominent Lebanese blues rock revival duo, The Wanton Bishops, through his role as their manager at creative incubator Keeward. He has also worked with Egyptian electro-singer and producer Bosaina, Montreal indie band Wake Island, and krautrock band Lumi.
