His most celebrated and controversial novel is The Palace of Rain (1998) , a powerful and daring treatment of taboos in the conservative Druze religion. Mamdouh Azzam is a Syrian novelist, whose social and political critique paints a vivid and condemning portrait of life under dictatorship in Syria. Much of Azzam’s work is set in his native southern Syria among the Druze community. The novel follows Salma’s attempt to escape with her lover, her family’s collusion with the authorities against her, and the ordeal of imprisonment, torture and abandonment that follows. Salma’s uncle is a local community leader with connections to the government, and a true modern-day tragedy unfolds. Her predicament is enforced by Salma’s tyrannical uncle and guardian, who was all too pleased to unload the burden of his brother’s daughter on to the first man who proposed. It tells the story of an orphan girl named Salma, in love with a boy from her village but trapped in a forced marriage.
“ Ascension to Death (Dar al-Mada lil Thaqafa wal-Nashr, 2003) is set in a village in the south of Syria.
In November we’re reading معراج الموت لممدوح عزام / Ascension to Death by Syrian author Mamdouh Azzam, the third book in And Other Stories’ Arabic Reading Group. From And Other Stories:
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