Press
September 24, 2018
Forlagsliv asks: Did Samar Yazbek write our most important novel?

Forlagsliv asks: Did Samar Yazbek write our most important novel?

Published by Forlagsliv, May 9, 2018

Samar Yazbek’s new novel, The Blue Pen, gives a unique insight into everyday life in civil-war Syria.

Yazbek’s new novel is a shocking record of a young girl’s attempt to acknowledge the wicked cruelty of the war. It is an original and moving book that brings the reader close to the inhuman sufferings of the civil war in Syria.

The Blue Pen is a strong novel that alternates between documentary and fiction.

In Dagbladet, Maya Troberg Djuve writes that it is impossible to put the novel down, giving it a dice 5.

“Yazbek has created an original narrative voice (…) The contrast between the mild and narrower narrative and the terribly harsh reality of the novel is powerful“, writes Djuve in the review.
In the novel, we meet Rima, a girl who can not keep her legs quiet. Together with her mother and a brother, she lives in a studio in Damascus. And it is their encounter with the war that is the main theme of the novel.
The mother protects the little girl as best as she can, and sees no choice but to eventually tie her to herself with a rope around her waist so that she can not leave her.The mother has her examined, but the doctors cannot find anything wrong with Rima.Rima does not understand the acts of violence caused by the war. She cannot deal with them, so she seeks refuge in a fantasy world. To take control of the fear and powerlessness, she finally starts writing down her story.“It’s a brilliant romance character that Samar Yazbek writes (…) the literally gifted, but ignorant Rima records without understanding completely, without interpreting and without partying”, the Gothenburg Post wrote about The Blue Pen when it came out. Read more in Norwegian