States of Passion: Nihad Sirees - Tapa blanda

'Charming... the old sections set in the world of women are beautifully recreated... takes us back to Aleppo's golden age' -- Financial Times

'A captivating novel about memory and storytelling, highlighting the rich cultural history of Aleppo' -- Observer

'Beautifully controlled... This is an absorbing novel that celebrates the art of storytelling... a valuable snapshot of a vanished world' -- The National

'Engaging and believable, full and rounded... transparent and immersive, poignant' -- Asymptote Journal

'Vibrant... a nice thread of suspense laced with humour... It's a tale well spun, offering a glimpse of a culture about which I knew nothing' --A Life on Books (blog)

PRAISE FOR THE SILENCE AND THE ROAR

'Profound and topical ... a chilling portrait of a people whose lives are dominated by fear' -- Independent on Sunday

'An excellent novel ... while The Silence and the Roar is a slender novel, it is far from slight' -- The National

'A searing political allegory in the tradition of Orwell and Camus. Sirees's book would be unbearably bleak if it weren't so funny: its narrator's caustic irreverence is his rebellion against the tyrant's roar that would reduce him to silence' --Adam Shatz

'In this short, satiric fable, a formerly famous writer silenced by an authoritarian regime finds himself in a predicament where Kafka meets Catch-22' -- Kirkus

'With biting humor Nihad Sirees reveals the extraordinary injustices of ordinary life under the oppressive rule of the Leader. This richly rendered story illuminates the hard reality of the many Middle Eastern states in political transition today' -- Shahan Mufti

'This is a small dystopian treasure of Gogolian texture, nightmarish but light, self-referential but never pretentious. Eerie, banal, yet bearing the cold imprint of reality, Sirees's vision of tyranny, superlatively translated, is distinctive enough to be ranked with Orwell, Huxley or Marquez's' --Independent

A hapless Aleppo bureaucrat is stranded in the middle of the deserted countryside as a violent storm sets in. When he seeks refuge in an isolated old mansion, inhabited by an aged gentleman and his sinister servant, he begins to uncover a captivating tale of family secrets, lost passions, and shady dealings. He is transported by these stories to Aleppo's golden age - a time of art, music, wealth and laughter - and the all-female society of the banat al-ishreh, a society of women who live, love, and perform song and dance together. And as he gradually realises how these entanglements of love and passion, cruelty and resentment, stretch across the generations, he discovers that his own life is also in danger. Sirees spins astonishing literary beauty out of this tangled web of family secrets, and he writes with great humour and warmth about the conflict between past and present in this surprising and unique novel about a lost world.