Roundabout of Death
by Fayṣal Khartash
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"Potent ... intimate, humorous and compelling ... One of the best Syrian novelists of his generation and one of the most exciting writers to emerge from the region since the Arab Spring."--The Times Literary Supplement Set in Aleppo in 2012, when everyday life was metronomically punctuated by bombing,Roundabout of Death offers powerful witness to the violence that obliterated the ancient city's rich layers of history, its neighborhoods and medieval and Ottoman landmarks. The novel is told show more from the perspective of an ordinary man, a schoolteacher of Arabic for whom even daily errands become life-threatening tasks. He experiences the wide-scale destruction wrought upon the monumental Syrian metropolis as it became the stage for a vicious struggle between warring powers. Death hovers ever closer while the teacher roams Aleppo's streets and byways, minutely observing the perils of urban life in an uncanny twist on Baudelaire'sflâneur. The novel, a literary edifice erected as an unflinching response to the erasure of a once great city, speaks eloquently of the fragmentation of human existence and the calamities of war. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Real Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: "Potent ... intimate, humorous and compelling ... One of the best Syrian novelists of his generation and one of the most exciting writers to emerge from the region since the Arab Spring."— The Times Literary Supplement
Set in Aleppo in 2012, when everyday life was metronomically punctuated by bombing, Roundabout of Death offers powerful witness to the violence that obliterated the ancient city's rich layers of history, its neighborhoods, and medieval and Ottoman landmarks. The novel is told from the perspective of an ordinary man, a schoolteacher of Arabic for whom even daily errands become life-threatening tasks.
He experiences the wide-scale destruction wrought upon the monumental Syrian show more metropolis as it became the stage for a vicious struggle between warring powers. Death hovers ever closer while the teacher roams Aleppo’s streets and byways, minutely observing the perils of urban life in an uncanny twist on Baudelaire's flâneur.
The novel, a literary edifice erected as an unflinching response to the erasure of a once great city, speaks eloquently of the fragmentation of human existence and the calamities of war.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Like life as we are told in multiple stories both fiction and nonfictionlived in war zones, this is a collection of vignettes and impressions that impress themselves on the narrator. He is a Syrian teacher of Arabic, the man on the Clapham omnibus, and at the mercy of the violence then ravaging now-destroyed Aleppo in 2012. Simple daily acts carry huge time penalties and require significant personal risk of harm, let alone crossing the many internal control points to find his kidnapped brother.
A moving story, sure to appeal to vibes-reading souls who urgently desire peace; for all that I think this 2017 book might be "of its time" not necessarily ours. show less
The Publisher Says: "Potent ... intimate, humorous and compelling ... One of the best Syrian novelists of his generation and one of the most exciting writers to emerge from the region since the Arab Spring."— The Times Literary Supplement
Set in Aleppo in 2012, when everyday life was metronomically punctuated by bombing, Roundabout of Death offers powerful witness to the violence that obliterated the ancient city's rich layers of history, its neighborhoods, and medieval and Ottoman landmarks. The novel is told from the perspective of an ordinary man, a schoolteacher of Arabic for whom even daily errands become life-threatening tasks.
He experiences the wide-scale destruction wrought upon the monumental Syrian show more metropolis as it became the stage for a vicious struggle between warring powers. Death hovers ever closer while the teacher roams Aleppo’s streets and byways, minutely observing the perils of urban life in an uncanny twist on Baudelaire's flâneur.
The novel, a literary edifice erected as an unflinching response to the erasure of a once great city, speaks eloquently of the fragmentation of human existence and the calamities of war.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Like life as we are told in multiple stories both fiction and nonfictionlived in war zones, this is a collection of vignettes and impressions that impress themselves on the narrator. He is a Syrian teacher of Arabic, the man on the Clapham omnibus, and at the mercy of the violence then ravaging now-destroyed Aleppo in 2012. Simple daily acts carry huge time penalties and require significant personal risk of harm, let alone crossing the many internal control points to find his kidnapped brother.
A moving story, sure to appeal to vibes-reading souls who urgently desire peace; for all that I think this 2017 book might be "of its time" not necessarily ours. show less
This is definitely a case of it's me and not you, dear book.
The story suffered from a couple of pet peeves of mine that I had a hard time ignoring. There were idiosyncrasies in the writing style that got on my nerves. The story itself did have some interesting information in it, I just wish I'd liked it more.
I received this book from Edelweiss for my honest review.
The story suffered from a couple of pet peeves of mine that I had a hard time ignoring. There were idiosyncrasies in the writing style that got on my nerves. The story itself did have some interesting information in it, I just wish I'd liked it more.
I received this book from Edelweiss for my honest review.
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1 Work 23 Members
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 892.736 — Literature & rhetoric Asian Literature Afro-Asiatic literatures Arabic (Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan) Arabic fiction 1945–2000
- LCC
- PJ7842 .H32715 .D3913 — Language and Literature Oriental languages and literatures Oriental philology and literature Arabic Arabic literature Individual authors or works
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 23
- Popularity
- 1,144,765
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.42)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
