“My father got dressed, brushed off his tarbush with the sleeve of his jacket, and placed it at an appropriate tilt on his head. Then he twisted the ends of his white mustache all the way up to his nostrils. We left the apartment, locking the door behind us, and went down to the street. I noticed we were heading toward the tram stop.”
“There, an angel revealed itself, taking the shape of an image he’d seen in a storybook, when he was younger, back when his mother read him stories about angels.”
Author Samar Yazbek and translator Leri Price have been longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award in the “Translated Literature” category.
“The no-hair phenomenon certainly has a backstory. “
“At the time of writing the novella, I was preoccupied with a question: Is there is free will? Naturally, this question led to others: And how does it fit in a socially controlled life? How can individuals who arrived to London, not by choice, escape the new constraints?”
“Of course, I do enjoy painting for you, right now, a slightly more calamitous situation than the one I actually face – I blame Algerian fiction’s long love affair with tragedies for my theatrics. But the truth is still harsh.”
We “reclaim” land from water, taking back what was never given / We worship our own footsteps, replacing the water’s sheen
“The next day, he was watching a livestream on television when he saw his dream on the screen. The streets of Beirut were flooded with mounds of garbage. This was the first step, he thought. Next, the piles of rubble would appear, and the people would vanish, leaving the buildings deserted.”
“A study of Coptic school sandwiches – or how to get your mother to make you the best chicken sandwich in the world.”
