Review and interview by Antoine Perraud and Faiza Zerouala for Mediapart, January 8th, 2019.
The Lebanese writer Hoda Barakat, captures the torments of refugees, their exile, their dispossession and the challenge posed to our societies, in an original and powerful epistolary novel, Courrier de nuit (Actes Sud). A serious and essential encounter.

A review by Damien Aubel, for Transfuges, December 2018
As all great epistolarians, Madame de Sevigne for example, the immense Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat knows that the art of correspondence is a metaphysical act. Here, a series of letters, with no direct link, follow each other as many variations on pain, and the exquisiteness of absence.

Hoda Barakat has imagined a correspondence written in haste, by people constantly on the run, all seeking a refuge that does not exist.
Muriel Steinmetz, for L’Humanité, November 22, 2018
Hoda Barakat (born in 1952, in Beirut), author of five novels published in France at Actes Sud, creates characters who wander the planet, men and women. Homeless, they are the victims of misery, social change and the conflicts that plague the world.

On Wednesday October 24th, the exclusively feminine jury of the French Femina award announced the 7 French titles and 5 foreign titles of their third and final selection. The winner will be announced on November 5th.
Samar Yazbek’s novel “La marcheuse” (The blue pen) tackles Syria’s chemical warfare, and more generally, the massive destruction of war, through the eyes of a woman-child.

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 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 …