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.
 

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.

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 …

With this poignant story, Yazbek writes about the magnificence and the cruelty of life, the destruction of worldly beauty and kindness,  but also its resilience, and the elevation of the soul. Here, Yazbek goes back to one of her favorite topics: the transformation of the underprivileged rural communities of Syria, but also their unique relationship to nature and its elements.

The narrator, a zoo keeper, his girlfriend Nonna, and the giraffe (by far the zoo’s most popular figure), form a strange, yet happy family. This is their story, unfolding in the margins of the brutal Syrian war. Until violence can no longer be escaped.

Depicted as a story of curiosity and lust in the German press, Selamlik, autobiographic novel, tells the journey of Furat from his home in Syria, to Sweden, via Turkey. A surprising bitter-sweet homo-erotic tale.