‘De kaart van zout en sterren’ van Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar is een betoverend boek voor liefhebbers van ‘De zoon van de verhalenverteller’. Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar vertelt het hartverscheurende verhaal van een hedendaags Syrisch meisje en een middeleeuwse avonturier, en beide verhaallijnen zijn even sterk en meeslepend. Wanneer Nours vader overlijdt, besluit haar moeder met haar drie dochters terug te verhuizen van New York naar Syrië. Nour probeert de herinnering aan haar vader levend te houden door zijn verhalen over Rawiya te herhalen, een meisje in de twaalfde eeuw dat zich vermomt als ... continue
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A dogged, absurd quest through the nightmare of the Syrian civil war Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria’s ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination. Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya... continue
Alia Malek weaves a lyrical narrative around the history of her family's apartment building in the heart of Damascus, the many lives that crossed in the stairwell, and how the fates of her neighbors reflect the fate of her country. At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians-... continue
A Syrian scholar working in Paris is invited to contribute to a conference on the subject of classic erotic literature in Arabic. The invitation provides occasion for her to evoke memories from her own life, to exult in her personal liberty, her lovers, her desires, and to revisit moments of shared intimacy with other women as they discuss life, love, and sexual desire. Far more than an erotic novel, The Proof of the Honey is a surprising and illuminating voyage into the history of Arabic literature. Borrowing inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights, erudite asides are woven into the fabr... continue
?The work of a moder-day Sozhenitsyn that exposes acts of violence and brutality committed by the Syrian regime. This compelling first novel is the astonishing story of a Syrian political prisoner of consciencean atheist mistaken for a radical Islamistwho was locked up for 13 years without trial in one of the most notorious prisons in the Middle East. The novel takes the form of a diary which Musa keeps in his head and then writes down upon his release. In Tadmur prison, the mood is naturally bleak and yet often very beautifully captured. The narrator, a young graduate, is defiant and stoical,... continue