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.

Novel excerpt published by Word Without Borders, special issue on Lebanon, July 2018
Translated by Robin Moger.
Translator’s Note: Hoda Barakat’s slim novel The Night Post is composed of the texts of six letters interrupted midway through by short, fragmentary pieces of narrative prose. The following excerpt is taken from the beginning of the third letter. A young man, apparently pursued by the authorities, is at the airport when he sees a woman rip up and throw away a sheaf of papers (the novel’s second letter). He reassembles the torn pages and, prompted by their content, …