Syrian literature

Syrian literature is modern literature written and orally performed in Arabic by writers from Syria since the independence of the Syrian Arab Republic in 1946. It is part of the historically and geographically wider Arabic literature. Literary works by Syrian authors in the historical region of Syria since the Umayyad era are considered general Arabic literature. In its historical development since the beginnings of compilations of the Quran in the 7th century and later written records, the Arabic language has been considered a geographically comprehensive, standardized written language due to the religious or literary works written in classical Arabic. This sometimes differs considerably from the individual regionally spoken variants, such as Syrian, Egyptian or Moroccan spoken forms of Arabic.

In Arabic, bilad ash-sham refers to the region of the eastern Mediterranean known in Europe as the Levant. The individual areas of this region have close historical, geographical and cultural similarities, although during the Ottoman Empire there were only administrative divisions, notwithstanding active regional cultural exchange, especially between the larger cities. The current states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian autonomous areas only came into being in the mid-20th century. Therefore, Syrian literature has since been referred to by literary scholarship as the national literature from the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as the works created in Arabic by Syrian writers in the diaspora. This literature has been influenced by the country's political history, the literature of other Arabic-speaking countries and, especially in its early days, by French literature.

Apart from literary genres such as Arabic poetry, fiction and theatrical works, contemporary Syrian literature also encompasses literature for children and young readers, as well as oral literature and subgenres such as science fiction, including utopian and dystopian fiction.

Arabic literature in Syria[edit]

Arabic calligraphy of the name Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarri

Until Syria's independence in 1946, the history of literature considers works written in the historical region of Syria as Arabic literature. At the time of the Umayyad Caliphate (ca. 661 to 750 CE), with its seat of government in Damascus, praise poems about high-ranking personalities at court, written in the classical form of the qasida, and poems of ridicule against rivals played an important role. The poets al-Farazdaq (640–728),[1] Al-Akhtal (640-708), [2] and Jarir ibn Atiyah (c. 653 – c. 729),[3] who had come to Damascus from various regions of the caliphate, were some of the important literary figures of this period. The four-volume anthology Yatīmat by the Arab poet and medieval literary critic Al-Tha'alibi (961–1038) and his subsequent anthology Tatimmat contain works by numerous poets in Syria at the time.[4] These anthologies were followed by the historian Imad al-Din al-Isfahani's (1125–1201) work Kharidat al-qasr wa-jaridat al-'asr. This anthology, written in the service of the Sultan of Syria Nur al-Din Zengi and his successor Saladin, contains numerous mentions of Syrian poets and their verses.[5]

The blind poet and philosopher Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (973–1057) from Maarat an-Numan in northern Syria is considered as one of the greatest classical Arab poets. His risalat al-ghufran has been compared with Dantes Divine Comedy.[6] Usama ibn Munqidh (1095–1188), a Syrian writer and poet, politician and diplomat, was one of the most important contemporary chroniclers of the Crusades from an Arab perspective. Due to his work as a diplomat, he knew important personalities personally, both on the Arab and Christian sides. His memoir Kitab al-I'tibar provides insight into the living conditions and the relationship between Christians and Muslims at that time.[7] In the 13th century, Ibn Abī Usaybiʿa (c. 1194 – 1270), a Syrian physician, medical historian, and biographer, wrote his Literary History of Medicine, which is primarily a collection of 380 biographies, mainly of Arabic-speaking physicians and scientists.[8][9]

Poem about Sultan Baybars from a Syrian hakawati book

In 1709, the Maronite storyteller Hanna Diyab (1688 – c.1770) from Aleppo was involved in a work of world literature, which has undergone numerous editions and translations since its first translation from Arabic into a European language. The French orientalist Antoine Galland published Diyab's stories Aladdin and Ali Baba in his translation of One Thousand and One Nights. Diyab had first told these and more than a dozen other stories to Galland, and Galland incorporated Diyab's tales as supposedly authentic parts of the Arabian Nights.[10] Two centuries later, Diyab's autobiographical travelogue was found in the Vatican Library. After scholarly examination of this Arabic manuscript and confirmation of the author and his work, it was published in English in 2022 as The Book of Travels.[11]

In the field of oral literature from Syria, folk tales, lyrics for songs, proverbs as well as improvised poems and storytelling have been popular. In tea rooms and coffee houses, storytellers called hakawati entertained people with their tales, characterized by colloquial expressions, rhymes and exaggerations.[12][13] These stories may originate from various traditional sources, such as One Thousand and One Nights, from epics by legendary Arab heroes such as Antarah ibn Shaddad and Sultan Baybars or from the Quran. By alternating between Standard Arabic and colloquial language, the storyteller often provides the different characters and situations with appropriate literary forms of expression.[14] In order to keep such stories alive also in the Syrian diaspora, the bilingual anthology Timeless Tales. Folktales told by Syrian Refugees, published online in Arabic and English, presented traditional folk tales as told by Syrian refugees.[15]


Literature in Syria since the end of the 19th century[edit]

Modern Syrian literature developed in the following periods:[16]

  • the emergence of modern literature in the Levant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries
  • the emergence of a national literature since the middle of the 20th century
  • the literature in the context of war and imprisonment

Literature of the Arab cultural renaissance[edit]

Collection of poetry Bint fikr (A Daughter of Thought) by Maryana Marrash, 1893

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writers primarily from Egypt, Lebanon and Syria created a reform-oriented cultural movement that became known as the Nahda (Arab Renaissance) movement. Among other views, they argued that religion and scientific progress in their region are compatible. They viewed Islam as a viable basis for a modern Arab society, but at the same time called for a renewal of Islam in the spirit of the spirit of the age. In Syria, which was then still under Ottoman rule, intellectuals took part in the Nahda movement with their literary and programmatic works.[17]

The Syrian historian, literary critic and founder of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Damascus in 1918, Muhammad Kurd Ali, is considered one of the great personalities of the Arab renaissance movement.[18] Francis Marrash (1835–1874) was a Syrian writer and poet of the Nahda, who lived as a member of a cosmopolitan Melkite Greek Catholic family in Aleppo. Most of his works deal with science, history and religion, which he analyzed from a realist philosophical view. His 1865 novel Ghābat al-ḥaqq (Forest of Truth) has been called one of the first novels in the Arabic language.[19] He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to literary scholar Salma Khadra Jayyusi. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the expatriate Mahjari poets.[20]

His father Fathallah and his brother Abdallah (1839–1900) also achieved literary importance, while his sister Maryana Marrash (1848–1919) was known as poet and for her literary salon. She was the first Syrian woman who published a volume of poetry and wrote literary articles in the Arabic press.[21] At that time, Aleppo was an important intellectual center of the Ottoman Empire, where many intellectuals and writers were concerned with the future of Arab culture. The Marrash family had learned Arabic, French and other foreign languages, such as Italian and English in French mission schools.[22]

Qustaki al-Himsi (1858–1941), a well-traveled and wealthy businessman from Aleppo, was another Syrian writer, translator from French and poet of the Nahda movement. As one of the first reformers of traditional Arabic poetry, he became a prominent figure in Arabic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Homsi is considered the founder of modern literary criticism among Arab intellectuals through his three-volume treatise The Researcher's Source in the Science of Criticism (1907 and 1935).[23]

Syrian national literature since the mid-20th century[edit]

Since the 1930s, a new generation of a modern literary movement emerged, particularly in the short story and novel genres. These include, the historical novels by Ma'ruf Ahmad al-Arna'ut (1892–1942) and al-Naham (1937, Greed) by Shakib al-Jabiri, which represents one of the milestones in the development of modern fiction in Syria. It is about the romantic experiences of a Russian émigré in Germany.[24]

In 1948, the partition of neighbouring Palestine and the creation of Israel led to a new turning point in Syrian literature. Adab al-Iltizam, the “literature of political engagement” characterized by social realism, largely replaced the romantic trend of the past decades. Prominent representatives belonged to the League of Arab Writers founded in Damascus in 1951 and the Arab Writers Union that later emerged from it in 1969. The writers in this union shaped the literature of socially oriented realism for the next twenty years. Hanna Mina (1924–2018), who rejected art for art's sake and dealt with the social and political problems of his time, was one of the most famous Syrian novelists of this movement. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Adab al-Naksa, the “literature of defeat,” represented the next important genre in light of the Arab defeat.[16]

Sociopolitical conditions for literature[edit]

Baath Party rule since the 1966 coup brought about stifling censorship. As Hanadi Al-Samman puts it, "In the face of threats of persecution or imprisonment, most of Syria's writers had to make a choice between living a life of artistic freedom in exile [...] or resorting to subversive modes of expression that seemingly comply with the demands of the authoritarian police state while undermining and questioning the legitimacy of its rule through subtle literary techniques and new genres".[25] Thus, Syrian literature in the late 20th and early 21st centuries displays characteristics of more than four decades of authoritarian rule. The central theme in the Syrian novel of the 2000s is the constant threat of surveillance and oppression by the secret services (mukhābarāt) and other governmental organizations.[26]

In 1977, the Syrian writer and journalist Zakaria Tamer (b. 1931) remarked: “The power of words is ridiculous in a country that is 70% illiterate."[27] Despite the high number of publishers (379 publishers listed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 2004), the numbers of literary works are relatively low. In addition to the illiteracy rate, several reasons have been named:[28]

  • Watching television as a privileged leisure activity
  • the low number of libraries
  • the price of the books
  • the shortage of skilled staff in the book sector
  • illegal reprints without regard to author's rights
  • censorship with revisions taking several months
  • as well as the banning of numerous works

Modern prose writing[edit]

Since 1960, the year he published his first collection of short stories, Zakaria Tamer has been one of the best-known prose authors among the Arab public. In his work, he places figures from the Arabic literary tradition in new contexts and thus alludes to the present of his readers. After working for many years as a public employee in the Syrian Ministry of Culture and at Syrian state television, he moved to London in 1981, where he also worked as a cultural journalist for Arabic newspapers and magazines.[29]

Haidar Haidar (1936–2023), who came from a village on the Mediterranean coast north of Tartus with a majority Alawite population, was known for his critical attitude towards political and religious institutions and his controversial topics.[30] He wrote seventeen works of novels, short stories, essays and biographies, including Az-Zaman al-Muhish (The Desolate Time), which was listed as number 7 by the Arab Writers Union as one of the 100 best Arabic novels of the 20th century.[31] His novel Walimah li A'ashab al-Bahr, (A Feast for the Seaweeds), first published in Beirut in 1983, was banned in several Arab countries and led to an angry reaction from clerics at Al-Azhar University when the book was reprinted in Egypt in 2000. The clerics issued a fatwa , banning the novel and accused Haidar of heresy and insulting Islam. The plot focuses on two left-wing Iraqi intellectuals who fled the injustice of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the late 1970s. In the novel, they blame dictatorships and conservative movements for the political oppression in the Arab world, and in one of the most controversial passages, God is described as a "failed artist".[32]

Ghada al-Samman

Ghada al-Samman (* 1942) comes from a long-established, conservative Damascene family. She is distantly related to the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, and her father was for some time president of Damascus University. After initially studying English literature, she went to Beirut to obtain a Master of Arts in Theatre Studies at the American University of Beirut. Among other topics, her works deal with the Six-Day War and the problems of Lebanon before and during the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975 and only ended in 1990. She is also considered a feminist author due to her texts that deal with the social and psychological restrictions for women in the Arab world. Al-Samman initially worked as a journalist and published more than 40 novels, short stories, collections of poetry and autobiographical works that have been translated into several languages. Her novels and short stories express strong Arab nationalist sentiment and criticize Zionism by siding with the Palestinians. In some of her novels, such as Beirut '75, she exposes class differences, gender conflicts and corruption in the Lebanese capital and indirectly predicted the civil war that would soon follow. Al-Samman never returned to Syria after her years in Beirut and has lived in Paris since the mid-1980s. Her novel Beirut Nightmares, published in 1977, was ranked 10th among the 100 best Arabic novels of the 20th century.[33]

Artist's impression of Salim Barakat

The early works of the Syrian Kurdish writer Salim Barakat (* 1951), born in Qamishli, are characterized by his youthful experiences with the diverse cultural influences of the Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Circassian and Yazidi ethnic groups in this region bordering Turkey. In 1970, Barakat traveled to Damascus to study Arabic literature, but after a year moved on to Beirut, where he lived until 1982. During his stay in Beirut, he published five volumes of poetry, a diary and two volumes of autobiographies. His volume of short stories from 1980, The Iron Grasshopper contains depictions of the life of the Kurdish population in his homeland. In 1982 he moved to Cyprus and worked as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Al Karmel, whose editor was the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In 1999 Barakat emigrated to Sweden, where he has lived ever since.[34][35]

Khaled Khalifa (1964–2023), born in a village near Aleppo and living in Damascus from the late 1990s until his death, was a Syrian novelist, screenwriter and poet who is also one of the well-known Arab authors. Khalifa studied law at the University of Aleppo. He was co-founder and co-editor of the literary magazine Alif, a forum for experimental writing, and a member of the Literary Forum at the University of Aleppo. Khalifa wrote novels and screenplays for films and television series that were adapted into films by Syrian directors. In 2013 he was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and was nominated three times for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His works were often critical of Syria's Ba'athist government and were banned in the country and edited by Lebanese publishers. His novels In Praise of Hatred, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, Death is Hard Work and No One Prayed Over Their Graves have been translated into several languages.[36]

Modern poetry[edit]

Adonis in 2015

Ali Ahmad Said (* 1930), who publishes under his pen name Adonis, was born near Latakia in northern Syria in 1930. After some years in Beirut, he has lived in Paris since 1985. Adonis is one of the best-known poets on the Arab and international literary scene. In 1957, together with his compatriot Yusuf al-Khal (1917–1987) and other renowned writers, he started the avant-garde literary magazine Shi'r ("Poetry"), in which the authors opposed the formal rigour and traditional styles of classical Arabic poetry. By drawing on the content of historical Arabic poets, who knew no taboos and were, among other things, critical of religion, Adonis intended to revitalize this intellectual openness. In addition to his poems, Adonis repeatedly caused a stir in the Arab world with his critical essays.[37][38]

Front cover of poetry collection Tufūla Nahd by Nizar Qabbani

Yusuf al-Khal made a name for himself as a poet and literary theorist as well as through his translations, primarily of English and American literature, into Arabic. As a Syrian Christian, he also translated the New and part of the Old Testament into Arabic. In the last year of his life, he advocated the use of colloquial Arabic in literature and from then on consistently wrote in Syrian Arabic.[39]

The Damascus-born poet Nizar Qabbani (1923–1998) is one of Syria's best-known poets. As a young man, he studied law and later became ambassador of his country until 1966. In verses that were unusually modern for the conservative audience at the time, he not only treated conventional descriptions of love, but also eroticism and sexuality. On this, he commented: “Love is a prisoner in the Arab world that I would like to free. I want to liberate the Arab soul, feeling and body with my poetry.” Unlike classical Arabic poetry, Qabbani wrote his poems in familiar and sometimes straightforward language, which made his poetry accessible to a wide Arabic-reading public. He published more than 30 volumes of poetry as well as regular articles in the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, published in London. Qabbani is also known for his verses about love that have been used by well-known Arab singers as lyrics for their songs.[40]

The poet, playwright and essayist Muhammad al-Maghut (1934–2006) is considered one of the first authors of Arabic free verse by liberating his poems from the traditional forms and revolutionizing their structure. He wrote his first poems in prison on cigarette paper in the 1950s. Written as a personal memoir about the prison experience, this was later regarded as revolutionary poetry. Without any formal training, he used his vivid imagination, his innate command of words and his intuition. Further, he wrote for the theatre, television and cinema. Maghout's work combined satire with descriptions of social misery and the ethical decay among the region's rulers. His play for the theatre, Al-ousfour al ahdab (The Hunchback Bird), was originally a long poem written while hiding in a small, low-ceilinged room. This poem started as a dialogue that he later transformed into his first play. Al-Maghut also collaborated with Syrian actors Duraid Lahham and Nihad Qal'i to produce some of the region's most popular plays, such as Kasak ya Watan (Toast to our Homeland), Ghorbeh (Alienation) and Dayat Tishreen (October Village).[41]

Theatre and screenplays[edit]

Syrian theatre became popular after 1959, when the government created the National Theatre Company. The playwright Abu Khalil Qabbani (1835–1902) has been considered the “father of Syrian theatre”.[42] The internationally well-known Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous (1941–1999) wrote the play An Evening with Abu Khalil Qabbani, and a theatre hall in Damascus was named after Qabbani.[43][44] Wannous has been considered as a major representative of Arab political drama since the 1970s. With some of his plays influenced by German writer Bertolt Brecht, Wannous reached audiences who did not usually read prose literature. He was also editor of the Arts and Culture section of the Syrian newspaper Al-Baath and the Lebanese daily As-Safir. Further, Wannous was a long-time director of the Syrian administration for music and theatre and editor of the theatre magazine Hayat al-masrah (Theater Life). He was also a founding member and lecturer of the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus.[45][46]

Walid Ikhlasi (1935–2022), besides being known as author of short stories and novels, was a lecturer for dramatic arts and an innovative playwright. His style is characterized by an experimental, surrealistic and absurd nature, often mixed with a realistic tone.[47][48] Mamdouh Adwan (1941–2004) was a prolific writer, lecturer and author for the theatre and television series. In addition to numerous plays and screenplays, his works include poetry collections, novels, newspaper articles and literary translations from English into Arabic.[49]

Literature in the context of war and imprisonment[edit]

Especially since the Syrian revolution and the ensuing Syrian civil war after 2011, a large number of novels, poems and corresponding non-fiction works inspired by imprisonment, torture and war, have been published.[50] Mustafa Khalifa (b. 1948) wrote his 2008 autobiographical novel The Shell based on his experience of 13 years as a political prisoner.[51] Fawwaz Haddad (b. 1947) described the beginnings of the regional conflicts in his 2010 novel Soldiers of God, including the atrocities of the clashes between al-Qaeda fighters, U.S. soldiers and torture victims in Iraq.[52] According to literary critic Anne-Marie McManus, these "contemporary works of art can shed much-needed light on the political, social and psychological contours of an uprising."[53]

Due to political repression and the ongoing civil war, many Syrian writers have fled abroad, creating works of Syrian exile literature.[54] Among many others, these include Rasha Omran (b. 1964) in Egypt, Dima Wannous (b. 1982), Ghalia Qabbani and Haitham Hussein (b. 1978) in the United Kingdom, Mustafa Khalifa, Samar Yazbek (b. 1970) and Omar Youssef Souleimane (b. 1987) in France, as well as Nihad Sirees (b. 1950), Ali al-Kurdi (b. 1953), Yassin al Haj-Saleh (b. 1961), Najat Abdul Samad (b. 1967), Aref Hamza (b. 1974), Osama Esber (b. 1963), Rosa Yassin Hassan (b. 1974), Liwaa Yazji (born 1977), Aboud Saeed (born 1983), Rasha Abbas (born 1984) and Widad Nabi (born 1985) in Germany. As these authors continue to write and publish their works in Arabic, they are banned in Syria. With regard to the expectations of Western publishers and readers, some authors complain that their works are often not meet with an interest primarily for literary reasons. Rather, authors are under the impression that Orientalist clichés will be met, for example regarding the dangers of the flight into exile or the trope of the oppressed Arab woman.[55]

Exiled in London, the writer and activist Dima Wannous published ironic stories about people in her home country under the title Dark Clouds over Damascus. In addition to her novels, Samar Yazbek also published the non-fiction book The Stolen Revolution. Travels to my devastated Syria. Liwaa Yazji's work as a writer of plays and screenplays is similarly marked by her reflections on the cruelty of the war in Syria, her situation as a writer in exile with family members in Syria who take sides against this war.[56]

A 2022 literary study investigated the loss of a place called home for Syrians. Maha Hassan’s Drums of Love and Ghassan Jubbaʿi’s Qahwat Al-General served as examples of contemporary Syrian literature following the Syrian revolution. The study posited "that in both works a real sense of home proves unattainable" and "that the unattainable sense of home depicted in the novels marks such texts as a part of the enduring legacy of the Syrian revolution and its causes."[57]

Syrian women writers[edit]

Many women writers have contributed to the development of modern Syrian and Arabic literature.[58] The earliest works of modern literature and journalism by Syrian women writers since the late 19th century, for example by Mary Ajami,[59] the founder of the Damascus Women's Literary Club, or by Maryana Marrash (1848–1919), showed tendencies of Romanticism and social realism. Since the 1950s, experimental novels and contemporary themes, such as discrimination against women, have been published by Ulfat Idlibi (1912–2007), Widad Sakakini (1913–1991), Salma Kuzbari (1923–2006), Colette Khoury (b. 1931) and Sania Saleh (1935–1985), among others.[60] Women writers of the following generation are Ghada al-Samman, Hamida Nana (b. 1946), Marie Seurat (b. Bachi, 1949), Ibtisam Ibrahim Teresa (b. 1959), and Hayfa Baytar (b. 1960).[61] These were followed by Lina Hawyani al-Hasan (b. 1975), Maha Hassan, Rasha Abbas, Rasha Omran, Ghalia Qabbani, Rosa Yaseen Hassan, Dima Wannous, Samar Yazbek and Liwaa Yazji.[62]

In 2018, Najat Abdul Samad's work La Ma' Yarweeha won the Katara Prize for Arabic Novels, and fellow Syrian Maria Dadoush was awarded the Katara Prize the same year for her unpublished young adult novel The Planet of the Unbelievable.[63] In January 2024, the novel Suleima’s Ring by Syrian emigré in Spain Rima Bali was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a renowned literary award in the Arab world.[64]

Selected works by Syrian writers in English translation[edit]

  • Adonis. Adonis: Selected Poems, translated by Khaled Mattawa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
  • Azrak, Michel G. (ed.). Modern Syrian Short Stories. (English and Arabic), Three Continents Press, 1988.
  • Barakat, Salim. Come, Take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems, translated by Huda J. Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen. The Arab List. London ; New York: Seagull Books, 2021.
  • Diyab, Ḥanna, The Book of Travels, edited by Johannes Stephan, translated by Elias Muhanna, 2 vols. New York: New York University Press, 2021, ISBN 9781479810949
  • Idilbi, Ulfat. Grandfather's Tale. Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, 1999.
  • Ikhlaṣi, Walid. Whatever Happened to Antara and Other Stories, translated by Asmahan Sallah and Chris Ellery. Modern Middle East Literatures in Translation Series. Austin, TX: Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas, 2004.
  • Khalifah, Khalid. Death Is Hard Work, translated by Leri Price. London, U.K.: Faber & Faber, 2020.
  • Khalifa, Moustafa. The Shell Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, 2016.
  • Maghuṭ, Muhammad, and Salma Khadra Jayyusi. The Fan of Swords: Poems, translated by May Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye. Washington, D.C: Three Continents Press, 1991.
  • Minah, Hanna. Fragments of Memory: A Story of a Syrian Family, translated by Olive E. Kenny and Lorne Kenny. Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, 2004.
  • Qabbani, Nizar. On Entering the Sea: The Erotic and Other Poetry of Nizar Qabbani, translated by Lena Jayyusi and Sharif Elmusa. New York, NY: Interlink Books, 2013.
  • Samman, Ghadah. The Night of the First Billion, translated by Nancy N. Roberts. 1st ed. Middle East Literature in Translation. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
  • Seurat, Marie. Birds of Ill Omen. London: Quartet, 1990.
  • Nihad Sirees. The Silence and the Roar. The Other Press, translated by Max Weiss, 2013.
  • Tamir, Zakariya. Sour Grapes, translated by Alessandro Columbu and Mireia Costa Capallera. Middle East Literature in Translation. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2023.
  • Wannus, Dimah. The Frightened Ones, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette. London: Harvel Secker, 2020.
  • Yazbik, Samar. Planet of Clay, translated by Leri Price. New York: World Editions, 2021.
  • Yaziji, Liwaʼ. Goats, translated by Katharine Halls. London: Nick Hearne Books Limited, 2017.

See also[edit]

Literature[edit]

  • Al Natour, Manal (2022). Home, identity, and place in Syrian literature: Maha Hassan’s Drums of Love and Ghassan Jubbaʿi’s Qahwat Al-General, Contemporary Levant, 7:1, 66-80, doi:10.1080/20581831.2022.2058717
  • Anis, Rida, Fozya Aldared, Bahriye Kemal & Agnes Woolley (2023). Diasporic Syrian women writers: stories of resilience and survival. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, doi:10.1080/13530194.2022.2164481
  • Behar, Daniel (2022). In the shadow-imagination: a brief literary history of Syrian poetry of witness. Contemporary Levant, 7:1, 22-38, doi:10.1080/20581831.2022.2045768
  • Behar, Daniel and Alexa Firat (2022). Syrian literary culture in retrospect, Contemporary Levant, 7:1,1-4, doi:10.1080/20581831.2022.2045760
  • Firat, Alexa (2017). Syria. In: Waïl S. Hassan (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions (online edition) Oxford Academic, Oxford, pp. 439–454, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199349791.013.29
  • Hourani, Albert: Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-521-27423-0.
  • Istanbulli, Linda (2022). Mihyar’s precarious journey: imagining the intellectual in modern Syrian literature, Contemporary Levant, 7:1, 5-21, doi:10.1080/20581831.2022.2045758
  • Kahf, Mohja (2001). The Silences of Contemporary Syrian Literature. World Literature Today. 75(2), pp. 224–236. doi:10.2307/40156522
  • Lang, Felix (2021). Transformations of the “Syrian” Literary Field Since 2011. Ouaissa, R., Pannewick, F., Strohmaier, A. (eds.) Re-Configurations. Politik und Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-31160-5_17
  • McManus, Anne-Marie, Syrian Literature after 2000: Publics, Mobilities, Revolt (PDF), pp. 200–219 – via academia.edu
  • McManus, Anne-Marie (2014). "The Contemporary Syrian Novel in Translation". The Arab Studies Journal. 22 (1): 322–333. JSTOR 24877920.
  • Julie Scott Meisami, Paul Starkey (eds.): Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature. Routledge, London 1998, pp. 746–748, ISBN 0-415-06808-8
  • Meyer, Stefan G. (2001), The Experimental Arabic Novel: Postcolonial Literary Modernism in the Levant, SUNY Press, ISBN 0-7914-4734-0
  • Seekamp, Birgit (1991), "Bibliography of Syrian Novels (1970–1989)", Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 176–181, doi:10.1163/157006491X00179, JSTOR 4183250
  • Sellman, Johanna (2022). Arabic Exile Literature in Europe. Forced Migration and Speculative Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781399500128.
  • Taleghani, R. Shareah (2021), Readings in Syrian Prison Literature. The Poetics of Human Rights, Syracuse University Press, ISBN 9780815655206
  • Starkey, Paul (2006). Modern Arabic Literature. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 2–47, ISBN 0-7486-1290-4.
  • Vauthier, Elisabeth (2014), La création romanesque contemporaine en Syrie de 1967 à nos jours (in French), Presses de l’Ifpo, ISBN 978-2-35159-425-4
  • Weiss, Max (2017). "Sight, Sound, and Surveillance in Baʿthist Syria: The Fiction of Politics in Rūzā Yāsīn Ḥasan's Rough Draft and Samar Yazbik's In Her Mirrors". Journal of Arabic Literature. 48 (3): 211–244. doi:10.1163/1570064x-12341347. JSTOR 26571505.

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