Fadi Azzam with Ghada Alatrash in Person

A haunting contemporary novel, longlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction, Huddud's House is a rich tale of love in the time of war, based in the storied city of Damascus.
How far is love willing to travel in search of its own lost voice?
When tyranny unleashes destructive forces that threaten to overwhelm a country, what are the effects on the lives and choices of ordinary humans? When citizens become inhabitants of a land of extremes, what do they do, to whom do they flee?
Shadowing the days of Syria’s Arab spring, Fadi Azzam’s epic novel, Huddud’s House—a haunting, contemporary novel rooted in the soil of Damascus, the oldest inhabited city in humanity—is a sprawling tale of love in time of war. Focusing on a quartet of characters torn between leaving and returning to Damascus, it follows intertwining stories of love and violence to their boundaries.
Azzam writes the spirit of resilience and resistance of the Syrian peoples. A saga on the dangers of ignoring threats or forgetting atrocities, he braves a long-distance search for his people’s voice, one that violence cannot silence.

Fadi Azzam was born in 1973 in Swaida, Southern Syria. He is an acclaimed freelance journalist and the author of Sarmada and a collection of short stories in Arabic titled Thahtaniat. Huddud’s House is his second novel to be translated into English and published by Interlink.

Ghada Alatrash, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. She holds a PhD in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, the University of Calgary, and a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to oppression and dictatorship.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College Street, South Hadley, United States