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[6 Mar 2023 | No Comment | 15 views]
“Remarkable lyrical form”, “a powerful portrayal of her country’s fragmented soul“ – Pierre de Gasquet reviews Yazbek’s “The Wind’s Abode” for Les Echos

A review by Pierre de Gasquet, for Les Echos, February 13th, 2023
The Syrian writer describes the nightmare of a country fragmented and suffocated by the dictatorship for twelve years. To the greatest indifference of the international community.
 

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[6 Mar 2023 | No Comment | 17 views]
‘Turn your eyes to the sun and die’: Fifi Abou Dib reviews The Wind’s Abode in L’Orient Littéraire

A review by Fifi Abou Dib, for L’Orient Littéraire, February 2nd, 2023
Neither dream nor nightmare. But an oak leaf is stuck to one of his eyelids, and Ali cannot move. Is he dead ? Is he alive? Is he in limbo, between two states? The Wind’s Abode by Samar Yazbek is the story of an agony experienced from within, observed from above, between pain, reminiscences, hallucinations and illumination.

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[6 Mar 2023 | No Comment | 20 views]
‘With great sensitivity, the Syrian author Samar Yazbek imagines a metaphorical novel about war, the power of nature and hope’ – Kerenn Elkaim reviews ‘The Winds of Abode’ in Livres Hebdo

A review by Kerenn Elkaim, for Livres Hebdo, December 16th, 2022                   
“Memory is a plague. Nevertheless , it can serve as a torch when everything is in tatters”… Ali oscillates between two states. Is he dead or alive? Even he doesn’t know. He wakes up with his body in pain, at the foot of an oak tree. Unable to move, he takes time to understand that he is not there by chance. An explosion seems to have pulverized his regiment. “He has lost his …

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[1 Mar 2023 | No Comment | 12 views]
“My country is chosen by the angel of death” – Khaled Khalifa, for Zeit Online

Published by Zeit Online, on February 15th, 2023, translated from the Arabic into German by Larissa Bender
Below some excerpts in English, translated with the help of Google translate.
Photo credit (c) Hassan Ammar / AP / Aleppo
***
“I never thought that one day I would stand on the hilltop of the world and see Syria being hit by an earthquake. The earth had trembled a few times when I was growing up, and all I remember is my mother’s fear that we would all die under the rubble. She woke us up after midnight and got us out quickly. The …