R A Y A | agency for Arabic literature
Published by Le Monde, September 27, 2018. By Eglal Errera.
Also featured in Le Monde des Livres.
Among all the works that come to us from Syria or from the diaspora, this novel has a unique timbre that mixes absolute realism and wonder.
Venturing into what is most intimate, Yazbek returns to the novel, her original vocation (Cinnamon, Buchet-Chastel, 2013). Amongst all the works that come to us from Syria or from the diaspora, this novel has a unique timbre that mixes absolute realism to wonder. Rima, the narrator of La Marcheuse (The blue pen), is silent. She hears the sound of her …
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Insightful and sarcastic, this is the powerful story of a young man diagnosed with leukemia. This debut novel by young Saudi writer Aziz Mohammed tackles modern Arab life.
“Dreams of Maryam Tair” is a debut novel by Moroccan writer Mhani Alaoui that brings readers to a Casablanca of myth and metaphor, of curses, witches, djinns and demons. But it is also a very present-day Casablanca.
This debut novel by Lebanese filmmaker Meedo Taha is a clever and very entertaining detective story set in Beirut, mixing political imbroglio with personal history.
The women of Syria have to fight not only the Regime, or the Islamist rebels; they have to fight the whole of a patriarchal society, including male revolutionaries. Yazbek collects their stories.
Published by L’Express. September 26 2018.
She understands French, but prefers to speak in Arabic. For fear of losing her tongue: “It would be a double exile”, explains Samar Yazbek with a serious smile, refugee in France since the summer of 2011. For having participated in the revolt against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, this secular intellectual and democratic has become a prey for extremists of all stripes. “And I would feel even more guilty,” she continues.
Published by Forlagsliv, May 9, 2018
Samar Yazbek’s new novel, The Blue Pen, gives a unique insight into everyday life in civil-war Syria.
Publishers weekly, August 2018
“Aspiring author Farid Abu Shaar, the hero of this entertainingly jaundiced look at Beirut’s publishing and printing industry from Lebanese novelist Douaihy (Chased Away), undergoes a series of swift, comical, and brutal face-to-face rejections of his handwritten manuscript, The Book to Come, which is contained in a red notebook and about whose contents the reader learns nothing.
Published by Livres Hebdo, June 30, 2018
“Syrian writer Samar Yazbek imagines a very metaphorical female protagonist who discovers war and the virtues of literature.”
The Blue Pen, in French “La marcheuse”, will be published end of August 2019.
