Novel
اعترافات كاتم صوت
Not translated into English
Mu'nis al-Razzaz · 1986
Synopsis
A family lives under house arrest. The father, Murad, a former leader pushed out of his organisation by an internal coup, the mother, Maryam, and their daughter, a schoolgirl, talk mostly to themselves, and the weekly calls from the son, Ahmed, are their only link with the outside. The novel then moves to the confessions of Yusuf al-Tawil, the killer with the silencer, who confides his crimes to Sylvia, a deaf woman he has hired and who reads lips, while the killer's thick moustache hides his mouth from her.
Context
Published in 1986, the novel was reissued in 1992 in Beirut by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, then in 2008 in Amman in the Family Library of the Ministry of Culture. The Arab Writers Union included it among the hundred best Arabic novels, and the review Banipal published an extract from it in English. At a tribute held in 2026, Mahmoud Mounir placed it among the author's first three novels, with their fragmented narrative structures.
Who it is for
For reading a Jordanian novel of repression and political violence, carried by the inner voices of its characters.
Prizes and reception
A critic in the review al-Hiwar al-Mutamaddin praised in 2020 a free narrative, in which the narrator steps back before his characters.
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