Farewell, Damascus - Softcover

Ghada Samman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1850772959 ISBN 13: 9781850772958

Publisher: Darf Publishers Ltd, 2017

Synopsis

Farewell Damascus, set in the city during the early 1960s, is both a paean to a beloved homeland and an ode to human dignity. Armed with her customary humor, pathos, and knack for suspense, Ghada Samman fearlessly tackles issues that roil societies across the globe to this day.

About this title

Review:

Coming from the same generation as the author, and also powerfully influenced and affected by the worldwide social changes of the 60s, I welcome this novel as a heart-felt salutation to women who struggled to change society's traditional views of women s so-called place in the world, as well as a reminder to others to keep on doing that. --Margaret Obank Banipal Magazine

The struggle to be an independent woman living a fulfilled life in a world that doesn 't really care what happens to her is rendered with sharp-eyed clarity and unnerving charm in this novel by leading Syrian author Ghada Samman. --BookBlast

At the core of Samman's writing is a cry for individual liberty... her work exhibits a boldness that defies restriction... her interesting blend of surrealism and verisimilitude, allows her to be simultaneously poetic and political in her prose writing... Samman's perceptive and creative works seem to function as literary wake-up calls for those willing to listen. --Pauline Homsi Vinson - Al Jadid Magazine

About the Author:

Ghada Samman is a Syrian novelist and poet born in 1942 in Beirut, Lebanon. She worked as journalist, broadcaster and translator; began writing fiction in the early 1960s. In order to prevent censorship, she established Ghada al-Samman Publications to publish her own works including short-story collection Your Eyes Are My Destiny (1962). She later moved to Paris after events in Beirut, wrote over 25 volumes of stories, verse, essays, drama and novels, including Beirut 1975 (1975), Beirut Nightmares (1976), The Incomplete Works of Ghada al-Samman (1978), Love in the Veins (1980), and The Square Moon: Supernatural Tales (1999); poetry includes I Declare Love on You! (1976-83) and I Testify Against the Wind (1987). Nancy Roberts is the translator of Ghada Samman's trilogy consisting of Beirut '75 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1995), for which she won the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award, Beirut Nightmares (London: Quartet Books, 1997), and Night of the First Billion (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005). Roberts received a commendation from the judges of the 2008 Banipal Prize for her translation of Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour (Cairo: AUC Press, 2007). Other literary translations include Naguib Mahfouz's The Mirage (AUC Press, 2008) and Love in the Rain (AUC Press, 2008), and Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses (AUC Press, 2012), whose Arabic original was shortlisted for the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Darf Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1850772959
• ISBN 13: 9781850772958
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198