Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction
An Intergenerational tale of life and love seen through the eyes of
three women from Raqqa
The western popular imagination about the now devastated city of Raqqa,
Syria is filled with static and clichéd images of the Arab world. On the
news, Raqqa looks like a dusty and abandoned desert village overrun by
ISIS and other brands of Islamic fundamentalists, making its desperate,
impoverished people yearn to flee at all costs. In the Arab popular
imagination, the image of Raqqa is not much different--this ancient
city, nestled along the Euphrates river in northeastern Syria, is
typically thought of by Arabs as a remote Bedouin outpost, far removed
from the nearest large metropolis, Aleppo.
People's real lives, however, are always more complex. Nothing could
help bring these real and complex histories to more widespread attention
than Shahla Ujalyli's brilliant new novel, Summer with the Enemy. This
novel is a compelling tale that follows the charming, if at times
difficult, everyday life of three women--Lamis, her mother Najwa, and
her grandmother Karma - and all of the complexities of their
relationships with each other, their extended family, and the wider
social worlds they inhabit. The diversity of life in Syria, especially
Raqqa, is on display throughout this book, and the stories told in its
seven chapters move back and forth between time and place, with
attention to the intimate details of lives and relationships, and with
an eye to the larger historical and political contexts in which they
live.
An intergenerational novel, Summer with the Enemy traces the lives of
these women not only in Raqqa where the bulk of the novel is set, but
also in the places their families lived before -- Turkey, Jerusalem,
Aleppo and Damascus. It reminds us that Syria and Syrians have never
been isolated from the world, and that indeed the lives of people
stretched far beyond the confines of Raqqa's city limits, long before
the online world existed.
