Short stories
وفي الناس المسرة
Not translated into English
Said Houraniyya · 1952
Synopsis
Et parmi les hommes la joie: stories in which the author, by his own admission, tells of his relations with his family and his revolt against it. A young man from a conservative Damascene background discovers ideas contrary to those of his family, opposes them, and family attachment collides with the conflict in a society that does not tolerate deviation. The story follows a man's struggle against conceptions he no longer believes in, and his departure from the family home, a revolutionary gesture at the time.
Context
The collection appeared in the early fifties and its title takes up the phrase that the angels sing in the Christmas gospel, peace on earth and joy among men. It was received as the arrival of a writer who set a boundary between himself and those before him: he rejects a reality that he holds to be the continuation of the past, and the conflict in it is no longer between good and bad but between the old and the new. The partition of Palestine, a few years earlier, weighs beneath every page. The Syrian Ministry of Culture gathered his three collections after his death.
Who it is for
Short texts in Arabic, with no French edition, drawn from the life of a Damascene family and neighbourhood; they can be read without preparation.
Prizes and reception
The collection that announced the birth of a new writer; its author is often called the Chekhov of the Syrian short story.