Khaled Khalifa, in an interview with Marianne Meunier for La Croix, March 10, 2023
Originally from Aleppo, Khaled Khalifa lives in Damascus, which he never wanted to leave despite the conflict. He reads there alone, saddened to no longer be able to discuss his reading with his relatives, most of whom have left.

By Guirado for Mare Nostrum, January 3, 2023
It all starts with a dream. A haunting and poetic dream in which angels descend from heaven to pick jasmine from the gardens of Basra – present-day Basra in Iraq. This dream continually monopolizes the mind of Hishâm Khattab who, after brilliant studies in geology which did not lead to any professional opportunities, now earns his living by reselling old books.

By Richard Jacquemond, for Le Monde des Livres, February 9th, 2023
Hisham, who lives off the antique book trade, is haunted by a dream. He sees himself alive, under the name of Yazid Ibn Abihi, in Basra (or Basra, name of the second city of Iraq, located in the south of the country), at the end of the first century of the Hegira, when this city was a major intellectual and religious center of the nascent Islamic empire.

A review by Nadia Leila Aissaoui, for L’Orient-Le-Jour, February 2nd, 2023
 
The Orchards of Basra by Mansoura Ez-Eldin, translated from Arabic (Egypt) by Philippe Vigreux, Sindbad/Actes-sud, 2023, 224 p.
In this captivating and remarkably translated novel, Mansoura Ez-Eldin takes us on a round trip in time and space, between Cairo and Basra, to meet timeless characters in a story that subtly mixes fiction and historical fact.

A review by Maya Kergall and Olivia Phelip, for Via Books, February 19th, 2023
At the start of 2023, many publications give pride of place to foreign literature. We find some heavyweights like the latest books by the late Javier Marias, Colson Whitehead, Joyce Carol Oates or the reissue of a major text by Vassili Grossman. These giants rub shoulders with a few novels whose authors are to be discovered without delay: thus the young Iranian Nassim Marashi, the American Ash Davidson, the Egyptian novelist Mansoura Ez-Eldin or even the American …

Damien Aubel, February 2023,  for Transfuge
Mansoura Ezeldin’s novel has the intensity and mystery of a marvelous gem. It illuminates this winter’s publications.
Here is a book which delights the reader in exactly the same proportion as it condemns the critic to embarrassment.
A book that prevents any analytical intent, and causes a thousand rare pleasures. A small prowess in which the qualities apparently least likely to agree come together with the most perfect naturalness. A malleable alloy where are mixed together the highest erudition — the intellectual effervescence of the Basra of the 8th century –; the flow, both tumultuous and …