Mapped
In Praise of Hatred
Khaled Khalifa
Khaled Khalifa's Aleppo is the walled old city of the late 1970s and 1980s: a grand family house behind heavy doors, the covered stone souqs, the Citadel above them, a girls' school and the university on the edge of town. A young woman's family is pulled apart as the Ba'athist state and the Muslim Brotherhood turn on each other, a conflict that ends in the 1982 destruction of Hama to the south. The map holds to the Old City and reaches out once, to Hama.
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The Dark Side of Love
Rafik Schami
Schami's vast Damascene saga braids a forbidden love across a blood feud between two clans with a murder mystery and a century of Syrian history. Old Damascus is its heart: the Christian quarter of Bab Touma where the clans live, the ancient Straight Street running through the walled city, the Umayyad Mosque at its centre, and the shadow of the secret police; the feud reaches back to the mountain village of Mala from which both families came.
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