The Supreme, as an eternal dictator, wants the only voice heard in his country to be his own, and for all his subjects to follow the path he has set, because he is certain that this is their destiny. But what will happen when he wakes up one day and finds a leaflet posted on the door of the cathedral, written in the form of a decree issued by the dictator himself, instructing the people to hang his head after his death on a pike in the public square, and calling for the killing of all his aides? Will the Almighty succeed in finding out who wrote this post and punishing him?
In this novel, Augusto Roa Bastos gives free rein to the character of José Gaspar de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist for nearly three decades, to narrate and dictate, ask and answer, tell stories and incidents, and judge situations and people, in a frenetic narration and a genius, competent construction. This novel is among the 100 most prominent works of literature written in Spanish.
On a small rooftop in one of the neighborhoods of Homs, the Hamimati Nabih Wardan and his birds live a life parallel to what is happening around him in the city, a private, exotic, warm, and pure life, different from the harshness of the chaos, destruction, and displacement events that Homs is experiencing during March 2011. There is a curfew on the entire city, and the birds remain, for a while, enjoying the freedom to fly in a vast sky that knows no restrictions, but even this matter is about to change as soon as the hand of the “khaki-clad ones” extends its hand to the sky as well as to the earth, thus closing Nabih’s crossing to life. Another.
In the novel “The Unfamiliar Passage,” Firas Al-Maasarani explores - in a simple and direct manner - the magical world of Al-Hamimatiya, with its rituals and seductions related to everything related to birds and their breeding, but he goes further than that to take a look at the city of Homs as a whole, and its daily routine before it was swallowed up by the moment of transformation. .
"A true story that showcases the most important milestones of the author’s journey through life and the challenges she faced, presenting the essence of her experience and the tools she used to transform pain into hope and turn the impossible into possible."
