Al-Samt wa-al-Sakhab is the first annotated edition of Syrian writer Nihad
Sirees's award-winning novella, created for the Arabic language classroom.
This edition is abridged in the original Arabic and includes vocabulary aids,
reading questions, and supplementary materials.
With The Silence and the Roar, Nihad Sirees writes a powerful, life-affirming
and Kafkaesque novel about a censored writer trying to live a normal life
under a Middle Eastern dictatorship, Syria.
A mysterious tale-within-a-tale of family secrets by the most prominent Syrian author working today. The world is so strange, The strangest things are the stories you overhear. When a hapless bureaucrat finds himself stranded in the countryside during a raging storm, he seeks refuge in a grand yet isolated mansion, inhabited by only an elderly gentleman and his unwelcoming servant. The tale of family secrets he encounters while sheltering there begins with a faded photograph in yellowed newspaper, of a beautiful woman stepping off a train at Aleppo station many years ago. It transports him to Syria's golden age, to the heart of the mysterious, unconventional banat al-ishreh - the infamous women who live, dance and play music together - and into a tangled web of forbidden love