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TMR Book Club Discusses “Where the Wind Calls Home” with the author Samar Yazbek

May 29 @ 19:00 - 20:00

Free

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Join TMR’s Book Club on Wednesday, May 29th at 1pm EST/ 7pm CET/ 6pm UK to discuss “Where the Wind Calls Home” with the author Samar Yazbek on Zoom. In this new novel by Syria’s most prominent writer of the National Book Award “Finalist Planet of Clay,” a wounded nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian Army remembers his life lived in the traditional Alawite way.

In this new novel by Syria’s most prominent writer of the National Book Award Finalist Planet of Clay, a wounded nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian Army remembers his life lived in the traditional Alawite way.

Ali, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian army, lies on the ground beneath a tree. He sees a body being lowered into a hole–is this his funeral? There was that sudden explosion, wasn’t there … While trying to understand the extend of the damage, Ali works his way closer to the tree. His ultimate desire is to fly up to one of its branches, to safety. Through rich vignettes of Ali’s memories, we uncover the hardships of his traditional Syrian Alawite village, but also the richness and beauty of its cultural and religious heritage. Yazbek here explores the secrets of the Alawite faith and its relationship to nature and the elements in a tight poetic novel dense with life and hope and love.

Published by World Editions. Translated by Leri Price.

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About the author:

Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist. She was born in Jableh, Syria, near Latakia, in 1970, and studied Arabic literature at Latakia university.
Yazbek has been a prominent voice in support of human rights and more specifically women’s rights in Syria. In 2012, she launched Women Now for Development, an NGO based in France that aims at empowering Syrian women economically and socially and at educating children.
In 2010, Yazbek was selected as one of the 39 most promising authors under the age of 40, by Beirut39, a contest organized by the Hay Festival. In 2011, she took part in the popular uprising against the Assad regime, and was forced to exile a few months later. In 2012, she was chosen for the prestigious PEN/Pinter Prize “International writer of courage”, in recognition of her book “In the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution”. She was also awarded the Swedish Tucholsky Prize, and the Dutch Oxfam/PEN Prize, in the following year. In 2016 Yazbek’s literary narrative “The Crossing” was awarded the prestigious French “Best Foreign Book” prize. Her novel, “The blue pen”, was in the third and final selection of the French Femina award, and was shortlisted to the National Book Award, New York under the title “Planet of Clay” in 2021.
In 2019, Samar Yazbek was attributed the honorary citizenship by the City of Palermo. And in 2022, Yazbek was chosen by the Royal Society of Literature as one of its 12 International W1riters, along with Anne Carson, Maryse Condé, Yoko Ogawa and Juan Gabriel Vasquez, among others, thereby joining the 12 inaugural awardees of 2021, including Annie Ernaux, David Grossman, Amin Maalouf and Olga Tokarczuk. The RSL international Writers program is an award recognizing the contribution of writers across the globe, celebrating the power of literature to transcend boundaries. New writers are invited to join the program each year.
Yazbek has published two collections of short stories, seven novels, four non-fiction literary narratives. Samar Yazbek lives in France. Her books have been translated in over twenty languages.

About the translator:

Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. She has twice been a Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, in 2021 for her translations of Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay, and in 2019 for Khaled Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work. Her translation of Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work also won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

Details

Date:
May 29
Time:
19:00 - 20:00
Cost:
Free
Website:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdOyprzMoGNLEXFoDCy77HhGoS5fbjpYS

Organizer

The Markaz Review
Email
info@themarkaz.org
View Organizer Website

Venue

Online