Publishers Weekly today revealed their top 101 Best Books of 2013, which span the adult genres, “nonfiction; fiction; poetry; religion; mysteries and thrillers; cookbooks and lifestyle; health; parenting; crafts and hobbies; comics and graphic novels; science fiction, fantasy and horror; and romance and erotica.” From this list, PW also selects an unranked “top ten”; among these is Syrian novelist and screenwriter Nihad Sirees’s The Silence and the Roar, beautifully trans. Max Weiss:
Sirees’s was the only book translated from the Arabic that made the list, and — it seems from a cursory look — one of very view translations.
Also this year, Sirees won Germany’s Coberg Rückert Prize, an award given by the German city of Coburg, and a PEN award for Writing in Translation. Sirees is the author of seven novels, a number of plays, and acclaimed television dramas. He was forced to leave Syria in January 2012.
On ArabLit:
‘The Silence and the Roar’: On Life as a Silenced Writer – Interview with Sarah Irving
Two Views of ‘Syria Speaks’: A Lens on Syria Through the Arts – By Sarah Irving and Nadia Ghanem
Author Nihad Sirees: ‘We Are Fighting the Formal History of a Regime’– By Nadia Ghanem
Syrian Novelist Nihad Sirees: ‘Creative Writing is Stalled Today’ – From Jadaliyya
‘When They Start to Think Only God is With Them, This is Bad’ – From interviews on CNN and BBC
Nihad Sirees on Writers in Syria: ‘What Should We Talk About?’ – By M. Lynx Qualey, from Qantara
Novelist Nihad Sirees on Aleppo Then, Aleppo Now, Aleppo Imagined – From PEN Atlas
On PW:
The review of The Silence and the Roar
An interview with Sirees – “Politics and Prose”
Sirees in English:
A translation of Sirees’s حالة شـغف (here called A Case of Passion, here A State of Passion) both times by Khaled al-Jbaili.
Daddy Dearest: Inside the Mind of Bashar al-Assad – on Daily Beast
Sirees’s twitter feed (@nihadsirees), often in English.
The Silence and the Roar:
The first three chapters of ”الصمت والصخب” on Sirees’s website.