Novel
فقهاء الظلام
Not translated into English
Salim Barakat · 1985
Synopsis
In a Kurdish village in northern Syria, the second wife of the mullah Binav, a landowner whose business is in decline, gives birth to a son, Baykas, whose name means “unique” in Kurdish. From birth, the child speaks to his family as if he had known them in a previous life, knows what he has never seen and grows at a prodigious speed, to the point of upsetting the whole village. Around him bustle twenty-eight characters, including Birina, daughter of Evdi.
Context
It is the first book that its author himself classes among his novels, after two accounts of childhood and youth. It turns the Syrian Jazira into a vast stage on which weigh the history of the country, of the family and of popular beliefs, and gives its characters Kurdish names charged with meaning. Actes Sud published the French translation in 1999, after two other books by the same author.
Who it is for
A novel of about two hundred pages, in an Arabic rich in rare words; the marvellous serves a point about society. Readable in French.
Prizes and reception
Cited first among his novels and regarded as the most significant; critics link it to magical realism.