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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > States of Passion

States of Passion

A hapless Aleppo bureaucrat is stranded in the middle of the deserted countryside as a violent storm sets in. When he seeks refuge in an isolated old mansion, inhabited by an aged gentleman and his sinister servant, he begins to uncover a captivating tale of family secrets, lost passions, and shady dealings.

He is transported by these stories to Aleppo’s golden age – a time of art, music, wealth and laughter – and the all-female society of the banat al-ishreh, a society of women who live, love, and perform song and dance together. And as he gradually realises how these entanglements of love and passion, cruelty and resentment, stretch across the generations, he discovers that his own life is also in danger.

Sirees spins astonishing literary beauty out of this tangled web of family secrets, and he writes with great humour and warmth about the conflict between past and present in this surprising and unique novel about a lost world.

Author

Nihad Sirees

Nihad Sirees

Books

The Silence and the Roar

States of Passion

Nihad Sirees is a civil engineer who was born in Aleppo. His novels include   Cancer, The North Winds, A Case of Passion,   and The Silence and the Roar.   Of his many television dramas the most widely acclaimed,   Silk Market,   set in Aleppo during the political turmoil of the 1950s, was shown throughout the Middle East, in Germany and in Australia. His latest series,   Al Khait Al Abiadh   (The First Gleam of Dawn), provides a frank depiction of the country’s government-controlled media.   After increasing surveillance and pressure from the Syrian government, Nihad Sirees left Syria in 2012. He was at   Brown University in the US on an International Writers Fellowship from 2012 – 2013.

Translator

Max Weiss

Max Weiss

Books

A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution

The Silence and the Roar

States of Passion

Max Weiss is an American scholar and translator, specialising in the culture and history of the   Middle East.   He studied biology and   history at   University of California, Berkeley   before moving on to   Stanford University, where he completed his PhD in modern Middle Eastern history in 2007.

Weiss is the author of   In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism and the Making of Modern Lebanon   (2010). He is also a noted translator of contemporary   Arabic   literature   into English. His translation of Abbas Beydoun’s novel   Blood Test   won the   Arkansas Arabic Translation Award.   He joined the faculty of   Princeton University   in 2010.

Published by

Pushkin Press, 2018
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A hapless Aleppo bureaucrat is stranded in the middle of the deserted countryside as a violent storm sets in. When he seeks refuge in an isolated old mansion, inhabited by an aged gentleman and his sinister servant, he begins to uncover a captivating tale of family secrets, lost passions, and shady dealings.

He is transported by these stories to Aleppo’s golden age – a time of art, music, wealth and laughter – and the all-female society of the banat al-ishreh, a society of women who live, love, and perform song and dance together. And as he gradually realises how these entanglements of love and passion, cruelty and resentment, stretch across the generations, he discovers that his own life is also in danger.

Sirees spins astonishing literary beauty out of this tangled web of family secrets, and he writes with great humour and warmth about the conflict between past and present in this surprising and unique novel about a lost world.

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