Novel
قلوب على الأسلاك
Not translated into English
Abd al-Salam al-Ujayli · 1974
Synopsis
Hearts on the Wires: Tareq, a young man from the countryside, at once naive, intelligent and a poet, arrives in Damascus at the time of the union with Egypt and discovers the city, its trams and its orchards, as well as the business world in which his uncle, Abd al-Majid Imran, moves. The latter, a bourgeois of feudal origin, struggles to build a cable car between Mount Qassioun and the heart of the capital. Tareq becomes attached in turn to four women, Majida, Nuhad, Safiya and Huda, while the country approaches the secession of 1961.
Context
The author's second novel, published fifteen years after the first, the book runs to more than four hundred pages; it was reissued in 1990. Beneath the love story, it follows the consciousness of the Syrian bourgeoisie on the eve of the secession, and gives a voice to each of its characters. Critics see in it the construction of a novel of formation, and many regard it as the author's best book.
Who it is for
A long novel in literary Arabic, in a simple language; it calls for a little knowledge of the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961.
Prizes and reception
Ranked among the hundred best Arab novels, it is often considered its author's best.