The Naufal/Hachette Antoine has recently issued a new novel entitled "2003" by the Syrian Novelist Abdullah Maksour.
The book revolves around over 100 years of defeats and lost hopes starting with the character of "the grandfather," who was a soldier in the Ottoman army. He witnessed the dissociation and collapse of the Ottoman Empire, its colonization, the loss of Palestine, and the region's fall under the American dominance following the Second World War.
The novel continues with the grandchild, a Syrian dentist, who witnessed the occupation of Iraq, where he worked. And because the dentist inherited the bad luck of his father, who was among the first to join militants in Syria, he was arrested by the US army following the fall of Saddam Hussein. His story tells a lot about what happens inside the so-called US detention camps.
"The war was ongoing. Saddam had disappeared and was remotely running the battle. However, one night, he appeared suddenly in a dental clinic after he felt some pain in his molars. From the window, he watched the collapse of his statue and his rule. But before leaving the clinic, he left the doctor a signed thank you note that led him to one of the US detention camps. This country does not fear the people who live in it, but fears the dreams of the demon inside them. In this country, I lived on the margin, between the good people-bad people duality, knowing the difference – in its streets – between the opponent and the enemy. How did this country made me face these events before it shuts the curtains on the last scene of Saddam Hussein's era?" the book writes.
The writer has many other works including "Scatters of the Soul," "Days in Baba Amro," "Path of Pains," and "Dust on the Memory."
