After trying my previous book, “In Defense of Insanity,” it occurred to me to do it again. The issue, in brief, is that I select from things that I have previously published in periodicals or introductions to books, what I consider to be valid beyond their time.
This book is not a continuation of the previous book, but rather a continuation of it.
It contains Lee's opinions on art, culture, journalism, women (and some politics). The question that confronted me in my first book confronts me now: What do these articles have in common?
The answer is as naive as I answered earlier: What unites these articles is that I wrote them.
The opinions here are my own, which may mean nothing to some of them, and may not mean anything to others. But it was important to me, myself, to say these opinions, and to record them, and among them was a farewell to figures like Assi Rahbani and Al-Dhahirah Rahbani, and even a farewell to a number of friends who had passed away, and who had passed through my life only briefly. Perhaps some bitterness still exists here as well. Upon reviewing the articles, I discovered that I was insisting once again on the losses that had befallen our lives. These are losses greater than military or political defeats. It is our constant humanitarian bleeding. And the one who gives us life...or makes us mad.
Owned houses and others are rented, fleeting and temporary dwellings, between which the writer moves across different Syrian cities, turning the houses into stations, or rest stops that allow her to contemplate the context of her life, her choices, and the source of her desire to remain between closed doors. The subjective nature of the book turns it into a kind of personal testimony, but Nour Abu Farraj is betting that her memories may intersect to a large degree with the experiences of middle-class young men and women from the 1980s generation in Syria, who lived a relatively stable life, before the war came and made a difference in their context. Forcibly expel them from their safe spaces.
In the face of the transience and uncertainty that war brings, description becomes a tribute to the fleeting; This is why the book tries to remind readers of the long time it takes to build a house, in the symbolic or structural sense, but it nonetheless warns them against becoming captives to the place, and encourages them to carry their homes as souvenirs, or small luggage on their long journey.
This book deals with 51 thoughts that touch the heart and soul, wander in love, and leave with much sadness and joy.
The book also contains, at the end of each thought, various quotations that show the point of view of philosophers and intellectuals on every matter we touched upon and in every whisper the book made to you.
It presents a number of feelings and sensations that will cross your imagination, your seven circles, and the borders of your senses to touch your longing and longing.
This writer does not call for anything except that you read, then close your eyes... and live your dreams.
About the novel:
The novel belongs to the doctrine of absurdity, as it tends towards black comedy, and in general it paints rich and diverse pictures of a group of characters that are united by the whole neighborhood of Sleep.
The novel presents various stories from the nineties in one of the neighborhoods of the Gulf, and the psychological changes that its people experienced, realistic events, and a fateful war.
The heroes of the novel are a random sample of simple people who lived in the writer’s imagination. He tried to dissect their relationship with each other and also their relationships with others.
Sami Al-Khelaifi.
