TEHRAN – “Summer with the Enemy” by Shahla Ujayli has recently been published in Persian.

Translated by Parisa Arab, the book was published by Maniahonar.

The popular Western imagination about the now devastated city of Raqqa, Syria is filled with static and clichéd images of the Arab world. 

On the news, Raqqa looks like a dusty and abandoned desert village overrun by ISIS and other brands of Islamic fundamentalists, making its desperate, impoverished people yearn to flee at all costs. 

In the Arab popular imagination, the image of Raqqa is not much different—this ancient city, nestled along the Euphrates river in northeastern Syria, is typically thought of by Arabs as a remote Bedouin outpost, far removed from the nearest large metropolis, Aleppo.

People’s real lives, however, are always more complex. Nothing could help bring these real and complex histories to more widespread attention than Ujayli’s brilliant new novel, “Summer with the Enemy”. 

This novel is a compelling tale that follows the charming, if at times difficult, everyday life of three women, Lamis, her mother Najwa, and her grandmother Karma, and all of the complexities of their relationships with each other, their extended family, and the wider social worlds they inhabit. 

The diversity of life in Syria, especially Raqqa, is on display throughout this book, and the stories told in its seven chapters move back and forth between time and place, with attention to the intimate details of lives and relationships, and with an eye to the larger historical and political contexts in which they live.

An English translation of the novel by Michelle Hartman was published by Interlink Books in 2021.

Photo: A copy of the Persian edition of Shahla Ujayli’s novel “Summer with the Enemy”.
   
MMS/YAW