A review for Transfuge by Tewfik Hakem, April 2025
Oum Kalthoum’s songs as a remedy for the melancholy of exile? What a beautiful novelistic idea, especially timely in this year marking the 50th anniversary of the Egyptian diva’s death. Other equally compelling remedies for treating the sadness of displacement and the trauma of those who had to flee dictatorship and war in haste are explored in this fifth novel by Sinan Antoon. It follows the lives of two Iraqi refugees in the United States, Omar and Sami.
The first seeks to forget his homeland and its wars, even going so far as to pretend to be Puerto Rican. The second struggles to stay connected with his lost paradise and his Iraqi memory, now clouded by a neurodegenerative illness.
Fictional brothers—rarely has the expression been so fitting. Exiled himself in the U.S., Sinan Antoon—well-known for translating Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry into English—continues to reflect on the memory and exile of his fellow countrymen. Can literature soothe the soul like lavender? The author seems to believe so, and so do we.
Yet, his intimate novel never falls into romanticism. Antoon’s writing is stripped down, sometimes seemingly dry, avoiding adjectives even when describing the deepest traumas of war and exile. The book offers clinical descriptions, hushed conversations, sparse dialogue, and music, with a minimum of words and a maximum of modesty. No chapters—just pauses and a single breath to encapsulate intertwined fates.
Simon Corthay’s French translation from Arabic is remarkable in this regard, with the exception of the numerous song excerpts. Something is inevitably lost when translating the lyrics of the “Star of the East” (Oum Kalthoum) into another language. Still, this does not disrupt the reading; if anything, it inspires the reader to (re)discover the songs mentioned.
Like many of us, Sinan Antoon may believe in the virtues of music therapy without fully trusting in it. His novel reminds us that the world’s violence cannot be dissolved by cheerful lyrics. And yet, believing in them completely may be the only way to endure life.
