Novel
جومبي
Not translated into English
Adib Nahwi · 1965
Synopsis
Jumbi: in Aleppo, the day after the 1961 breakup that undid the union of Syria and Egypt, the people of the working-class districts who remained loyal to the union struggle against the new regime. The book strings together the scenes of this struggle, the facts and episodes that show the Syrians' attachment to the lost union and their will to restore it.
Context
The book appeared in the mid-sixties, a few years after the secession that had undone the Syrian-Egyptian union, and its author had been one of its most exposed opponents. Critics in his country credit him with having treated this subject without lapsing into didacticism or propaganda, into which almost all the committed writers of his generation fell. Its strength seems to them to lie in the popular milieu of Aleppo, which he knew street by street, in a simple, warm language, and in tightly knotted plots. Bibliographies date it to 1964, 1965 and 1966.
Who it is for
A book in Arabic, with no French or English edition. It helps to know that everything in it presupposes knowledge of the coup d'état of September 1961, which separated Syria from Egypt three years after their union.
Prizes and reception
Critics in the country regard it as the book that best expressed the secession, and as one of the first to bring the life of Aleppo's neighbourhoods into Syrian narrative.