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A Novel
by Fadi Azzam
A haunting contemporary novel, longlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction, Huddud's House is a rich tale of love in the time of war, based in the storied city of Damascus.
How far is love willing to travel in search of its own lost voice?
When tyranny unleashes destructive forces that threaten to overwhelm a country, what are the effects on the lives and choices of ordinary humans? When citizens become inhabitants of a land of extremes, what do they do, to whom do they flee?
Shadowing the days of Syria's Arab spring, Fadi Azzam's epic novel, Huddud's House—a haunting, contemporary novel rooted in the soil of Damascus, the oldest inhabited city in humanity—is a sprawling tale of love in time of war. Focusing on a quartet of characters torn between leaving and returning to Damascus, it follows intertwining stories of love and violence to their boundaries.
Azzam writes the spirit of resilience and resistance of the Syrian peoples. A saga on the dangers of ignoring threats or forgetting atrocities, he braves a long-distance search for his people's voice, one that violence cannot silence.
"A landmark work of contemporary Arabic literature, at once allusive and defiant … An enigmatic novel of resistance by the prizewinning Syrian writer in exile. Huddud's house is a real place in Azzam's elegantly unfolding story, a ramshackle maze containing 170,000 Arabic books and 12,000 manuscripts…at its best...reminiscent of García Márquez." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Azzam brilliantly conveys the growing apprehension and tension of a society gradually slipping into totalitarianism." ―Booklist
"Huddud's House is one of those beautiful texts that paint the darkness of reality without confining it to the Syrian space … Difficult love stories intersect as the author takes the reader on a journey through the depths of the human soul that desires, craves, hates, is jealous, and fights for those desires ..." ―Fadhila El Farouk
This information about Huddud's House was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Fadi Azzam is a Syrian novelist and writer. He is the author of the highly-acclaimed Sarmada, longlisted for the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Huddud's House, his second novel, was longlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He was the culture and arts correspondent for Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper and his opinion columns have appeared in the New York Times and in newspapers across the Middle East.
Ghada Alatrash, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. She holds a PhD in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, the University of Calgary, and a Master's Degree in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to oppression and dictatorship.
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