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.
Industry Reviews
"Brimful of magic, Sarmada is a book to be swallowed in rapturous gulps. It's beautifully written ... This is a very Syrian novel, illustrating sectarian co-existence and providing glimpses of the country's mystical and literary wonders ... Sarmada is, indirectly, an early novel of the contemporary Arab revolutions."----The Independent on Sarmada
"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
"[T]he gem of the Arabic literature of dissent... [Sarmada] isn't narrowly political and doesn't paint a portrait of the uprisings themselves. Instead, it gives us something much more valuable: a detailed view of the entire mechanism of a culture--its connection to the land, its way of telling stories, and its idiosyncrasies. ... Channeling Marquez and Borges, Azzam winds the plot audaciously, bringing the story to highly surreal and disquieting places."----The New Yorker on Sarmada