Description

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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.

About the Author

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Fadi Azzam is a Syrian novelist and writer. He is the author of the highly-acclaimed Sarmada, longlisted for the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Huddud’s House, his second novel, was longlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He was the culture and arts correspondent for Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper and his opinion columns have appeared in the New York Times and in newspapers across the Middle East.

Ghada Alatrash, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. She holds a PhD in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, the University of Calgary, and a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to oppression and dictatorship.

Praise For…

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“[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

“Fadi Azzam proves to us that there are still undiscovered gems in Arabic literature… beautiful writing, long stifled by dictatorship, has just begun to free itself from the grips of censorship. Sarmada and its women dance in front of us with all their senses; they take us by the hand and escort us into their village homes, where the events of this great novel take place.”
— —Rafik Schami on Sarmada

“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

“A landmark work of contemporary Arabic literature, at once allusive and defiant … An enigmatic novel of resistance by the prizewinning Syrian writer in exile. Huddud’s house is a real place in Azzam’s elegantly unfolding story, a ramshackle maze containing 170,000 Arabic books and 12,000 manuscripts … Given the subversive themes that punctuate a narrative that, at its best, is reminiscent of García Márquez, it’s small wonder that its author has fled Syria for the safety of Britain.”
— — Kirkus Reviews

“Azzam brilliantly conveys the growing apprehension and tension of a society gradually slipping into totalitarianism.”
— — Booklist