Patrick Süskind's 'The Pigeon' Now Available in Arabic

Patrick Süskind's 'The Pigeon' Now Available in Arabic
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Patrick Süskind's 'The Pigeon' Now Available in Arabic

Patrick Süskind's 'The Pigeon' Now Available in Arabic

Iraq's Dar Al Mada publishing house has released an Arabic translation of Patrick Süskind’s “The Pigeon.” The novel is translated by Kamiran Hoj, and the book’s introduction is written by Ali Badr.

“The protagonist in Süskind’s novel reflects an existential feeling of impotence: the inability to live, inability to love, and even inability to reject. But did he manage to find comfort in his secure island in this insecure world? Whatever we think of this protagonist, he always hated those events that disturb his inner stability, and the order of his life. However, the levels of uncertainty and fear are not the same; they don’t come from home, or from the small things, but from this irrational world,” writes Badr in the introduction.

This novel symbolizes chosen and forced isolation. A novel that exposes our impotent life, and explains how we, human beings, simply collapse under the pressure of the silly, and not necessarily, huge matters.

It’s a very realistic novel despite its imaginary end that eliminates the sad and cruel edge of this work. “Also, me, I increasingly spend most of my days in small rooms and face a growing challenge to leave them. However, I wish I can find a small room one day, a very small one that surrounds me tightly so I can take it with me when I leave,” said Süskind about his novel.

Süskind, writer of the world-known novel “Perfume,” is a mysterious personality, as “no one knows where he lives, what rituals he practices, his goals, his stances in critical causes, his thoughts about his peers, relationships, or his family,” reads Badr’s introduction.

The only available photograph of him features a skinny bald man with handsome features and dark eyes. He only appeared in four interviews and refused to partake in TV programs or festivals. He also rejected awards including the best literary work award (France, 1987), the Toucan Prize (1987), and the FAZ-Literaturpreis (1987). He never attended the premieres of the movies he wrote and never signed a book.



Activists Return Macron Waxwork Stolen from Paris Museum 

A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)
A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)
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Activists Return Macron Waxwork Stolen from Paris Museum 

A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)
A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)

Greenpeace activists overnight Tuesday to Wednesday returned a wax figure of President Emmanuel Macron they had stolen from a Paris museum as part of a protest against French economic ties with Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

After taking the waxwork from the Grevin Museum in a carefully planned heist on Monday the campaigners had placed it outside the Russian embassy in a symbolic protest.

Carrying on the action late on Tuesday, they placed the waxwork, estimated to be worth 40,000 euros ($45,500), in a chest and put it outside the headquarters of French electricity giant EDF.

They also put the statue on its feet and stood next to it a sign with a slogan denouncing Macron for not completely cutting ties with Russia under Vladimir Putin, in particular in the energy sphere.

"Putin-Macron radioactive allies," it said.

Police then arrived and secured the chest and waxwork ahead of its return to the Grevin Museum, the Paris equivalent of Madame Tussauds in London.

"We came to bring back the statue of Emmanuel Macron because, as we said from the start, we had just borrowed it," Jean-Francois Julliard, executive director of Greenpeace France, told AFP at the scene.

"We notified both the management of the Grevin Museum and the police. It's up to them to come and retrieve it," he said.

The choice of the EDF headquarters was "to make Macron face up to his responsibilities concerning the trade that is maintained with Russia, particularly in the nuclear sector," he added.

According to Julliard, French companies can still, despite the sanctions regime in place since the invasion, "import a whole host of products from Russia" including enriched uranium to power French nuclear power plants, natural uranium transiting through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan via Russia, LNG and chemical fertilizers.

He said Greenpeace particularly criticized the surge in Russian fertilizer imports into the EU, which rose some 80 percent between 2021 and 2023 according to French fertilizer manufacturers.

According to a police source, two women and a man on Monday entered the Grevin Museum posing as tourists and, once inside, changed their clothes to pass for workers. The activists slipped out through an emergency exit with the waxwork.

A museum spokeswoman acknowledged that "they had clearly done their research very thoroughly".