Farewell, Damascus
(eBook)

Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

stdClass Object
(
    [year] => 2017
    [artist] => Ghada Samman
    [fiction] => 1
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/ebp_9781850773023_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 12408687
    [isbn] => 9781850773023
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => Farewell, Damascus
    [demo] => 
    [segments] => Array
        (
        )

    [pages] => 246
    [children] => 
    [artists] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [name] => Ghada Samman
                    [artistFormal] => Samman, Ghada
                    [relationship] => AUTHOR
                )

            [1] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [name] => Nancy Roberts
                    [artistFormal] => Roberts, Nancy
                    [relationship] => AUTHOR
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    [genres] => Array
        (
            [0] => Fiction
            [1] => Literary
            [2] => Women
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    [price] => 0.45
    [id] => 12408687
    [edited] => 
    [kind] => EBOOK
    [active] => 1
    [upc] => 
    [synopsis] => Ghada Samman's most recent novel, Farewell, Damascus is set in early 1960's Damascus – a city that now languishes in the grip of corruption and political oppression following the Baathist takeover in Syria. The book opens as Zain Khayyal, a university student and aspiring young writer, plots an early-morning escape from her house as her husband slumbers. Her mission: to get an illicit abortion, plans for which she's divulged to no one, and to announce that she wants out of her stifling marriage. A rebel and a trail-blazer par excellence, Zain draws down the wrath of polite society and the authorities, political and religious alike, as she challenges attitudes and practices that demean rather than dignify, and a ruling regime that sucks the life out of both oppressed and oppressor. As the plot unfolds, Zain finds her way as a student to a neighboring country which, though it grants her the freedom, respect and appreciation she had lacked in her homeland, becomes a place of anguished exile.

Armed with her accustomed humor, pathos and knack for suspense, Samman fearlessly tackles issues that roil societies across the globe to this day: the stigma that attaches to the divorced woman but not the divorced man; whether to choose a life partner for love, or for social status, prestige and material security; whether abortion is a crime or a means of forestalling needless undeserved suffering; lesbian intimacy as a declaration of freedom from male abuse and tyranny; rape as an instrument of humiliation and subjugation and unconditional acceptance as healing balm. Farewell, Damascus is both a paean to a beloved homeland and an ode to human dignity.
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12408687
    [pa] => 
    [publisher] => Darf Publishers
    [purchaseModel] => INSTANT
)