Meet Camilla Gibb

Photo credit: Penguin Random House Canada, Girl Well Read, and Aurora Library. Do not use without written permission.

Camilla Gibb's widely praised novel is a poignant and intensely atmospheric look beyond the stereotypes of Islam. At this event, Camilla provided the back story of this amazing work.

Gibb spent 15 years researching Sweetness in the Belly whose roots began to form 1994-95 when she was was studying for her PhD in social anthropology.

Originally from England, Camilla grew up in a family with a rigid, ex-military father who was rarely employed (he was even thrown out of the Army). She was told by her father that religion was invented because humans were weak so she grew up having what she calls "spiritual envy." Gibb's parents divorced when she was 10 and her 40-year-old mother had a passionate affair with a 28-year-old Armenian actor who had grown up in Lebanon—although not a Muslim, he spoke Arabic. Camilla said that he brought joy into her world with his zest for life, and piqued her curiosity about the Muslim world.

"I was curious enough that once I got to university I started studying not only anthropology but also middle eastern studies," Camilla explained. "I knew that I wanted to learn the language, so in my third year of undergraduate at the University of Toronto, I went to Cairo and spent a year living in this heaving, seething metropolis of 18 centuries of history and it was a vastly overwhelming place where I couldn’t have felt smaller." She was asked why she wasn't Muslim, she felt that she had lost the gene for faith.

When Gibb returned to Toronto, it took three months for her to be able to look up—she had shielded herself and been guarded in Cairo. While studying at U of T, she met a young Ethiopian woman who had come to Canada as a refugee. The woman shared her experiences with Gibb exposing her to that part of the world and the culture of Ethiopia.

In 1992, Camilla went to Oxford. It was at this time that the government of Ethiopia was overthrown. Her professor worked in Sudan/Ethiopia and encouraged her to go to Harrar (the fourth most holiest city). She did end up visiting and lived there for a year.

Gibb longed to return to Ethiopia. She also wanted to write about her experience but didn't know how. In 2000, while in Banff, she got the idea about Lilly going back to Harar. Camilla also cited the film Hideous Kinky as another seed. Gibb spent three years writing and then took the book to her editor at DoubleDay who asked "Who is Lilly as a grown up?" This became the version we know (and love) with the first draft providing the backstory.

In 2005, the book was optioned for film which took Camilla back to Ethiopia and back to the women who also served as inspiration—she experienced wonderful reunions with friends. Unfortunately, the film (which premiered at TIFF) is not without controversy: an early synopsis described Lilly as a "white Ethiopian" woman portrayed by Dakota Fanning and this fuelled a cultural appropriation debate on Twitter.

Although the story is located in a historic and cultural context, it stems from Gibb's imagination and offers readers an emotional experience.

Sweetness in the Belly

After her hippie British parents are murdered, Lilly is raised at a Sufi shrine in Morocco. As a young woman she goes on pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she teaches Qur'an to children and falls in love with an idealistic doctor. But even swathed in a traditional headscarf, Lilly can't escape being marked as a foreigner. Forced to flee Ethiopia for England, she must once again confront the riddle of who she is and where she belongs.

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CAMILLA GIBB is the author of five novels: Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life, Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement and This is Happy. She has also been the recipient of the Trillium Book Award, the City of Toronto Book Award and the CBC Canadian Literary Award and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Camilla has a Ph.D. from Oxford University and is an adjunct faculty member of the graduate creative writing programs at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph-Humber. She is currently the June Callwood Professor in Social Justice at Victoria College, University of Toronto.