Sakarija Tamer’s stories provide an impressive insight into Syria’s political and social problems. Injustice and oppression are his recurring themes. He describes the cruelty of people towards their fellow human beings, the oppression of the poor by the rich, the repression of the powerful against the weak. The Arab world that Tamer presents to us is characterized by poverty, hardship, taboos, injustice and violence.
However, not all the people in Tamer’s stories are desperate, and not all of the situations his characters find themselves in are completely hopeless. There are always at least fleeting glimmers of hope, beauty and dignity.
The storyteller Tamer, taking into account modern depth psychological tendencies, continues an old tradition of Arabic literature: almost all of his stories are allegories and have a strong touch of the fairytale – without ever being moralizing. The apparent contradiction – the pictorial, fairytale-like on the one hand, the harsh political and social reality on the other – is what creates the tension and appeal of these extraordinary stories.
Press reviews
An impressive book, written in a symbolically encoded language that makes the social and political problems of Syria all too clear.
– Observer
Syrian stories
Translated from Arabic by Wolfgang Werbeck
Hardcover, with dust jacket
ISBN 978-3-85787-158-0
pages 124
Published 1987
