Praise for Samar Yazbek "One of Syria's most gifted novelists." -CNN
“Yazbek’s is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.” —The Guardian
Praise for Where the Wind Calls Home
"Samar Yazbek’s spellbinding novel, Where the Wind Calls Home, tells the story of Ali—a wounded soldier holding on to life through his visions, memories, and hallucinations in the span of half a day during the Syrian civil war. The emerging mindscape is as radiant as it is reeling, unfurling the lyric beauty of Ali’s mystical commune with nature alongside the tragic reality of human devastation. Leri Price’s translation is an extraordinary feat of restraint, beautifully recreating Yazbek’s hypnotic language in English." —National Book Award Judges Citation
“The potent latest
from Yazbek (Planet of Clay) weighs the consequences of the Syrian civil
war after a 19-year-old soldier, Ali, survives his patrol station’s 2013
bombing in the Lattakia mountains. This slim novel packs a punch.” —Publishers Weekly
"Where the Wind Calls Home, Syrian author Samar Yazbek’s latest novel to be translated into English, is a stunning offering of spirituality, memory, and all those implacable, liminal spaces wherein only the mind may venture." —Asymptote Journal
"In this compact, stream-of-consciousness narrative, 19-year-old Ali, a conscript in the Syrian Army fighting in the civil war that’s ravaged the country for more than a decade, lingers between life and death after a bomb accidentally falls on the position he shares with four comrades. Yazbek, a Syrian journalist and screenwriter who’s written previously about the war in both fiction and nonfiction, returns repeatedly to vivid imagery of trees, rivers, sky, and other aspects of the natural world that are central elements in defining Ali’s character and experience. His broken body lies beneath a large tree that evokes memories of a more than 500-year-old oak tree that stood next to the prayer space in his village, and in which he once constructed a kind of dwelling with the assistance of his mother, Nahla. Yazbek efficiently paints a portrait of her sympathetic protagonist, a young man possessed of both strong religious impulses and a rebellious streak that exposes him to beatings both at school and at home." —Kirkus Reviews
"An evocative, if slow-paced, meditation about people caught in the turning wheel of Syria’s violent present." —Kirkus Reviews
""Where the Wind Calls Home introduces us to Ali, a 19-year-old Syrian soldier on the brink of life and death, vividly portrayed by the talented novelist and journalist Samar Yazbek. Ali, lying beneath a timeless tree, grapples with memories oscillating between joy and pain. He's unsure if the body being laid to rest is his or another's, consumed by haunting uncertainty. Award-winning translator Leri Price renders Yazbek's exploration of war's devastation, the allure of Ali's traditional Alawite village, and the profound connection between Ali and his surroundings in English." —About Her
"Yazbek’s well-paced and intimate novel reveals the traumas of war and being a soldier."
