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My Name is Salma
(US titleThe Cry of the Dove)
'Jordanian British author Faqir has written an exquisite novel describing the plight of Salma, a young Bedouin woman who has become pregnant before marriage and must flee her village to avoid being murdered by her brother, as the tribal code of honor killings demands. Told in the first person, the discontinuous narrative of Salma's life is as well constructed as a mosaic in which each tile is lovely in itself but helps to create a whole that is breathtaking. As the reader is taken back and forth in time, Salma reinvents herself as an immigrant in England, where she finds work as a seamstress, makes friends with a Pakistani woman also fleeing her family's wrath, copes with her aging alcoholic roommate, learns English, and eventually enters the university. Yet she is unable to escape her past; she's haunted by memories of her village childhood, eight years in protective custody in a Middle Eastern prison, time spent in a Lebanese convent, and, most important, the daughter taken from her. As Salma's life moves toward its inevitable climax, readers will be transfixed. Strongly recommended for all literary collections.' Andrea Kempf, Library Journal, starred review
The Bookbag Review 
Pillars of Salt
'This is a powerful and distinctive piece of writing, melding the recent history of the country [Jordan] with the continuing personal and political oppression of Arab women.' Pam Barrett, The Sunday Times
'This skillfully constructed novel, the second from an acclaimed Jordanian writer, portrays the vulnerability of women in an embattled traditional culture through the stories exchanged by two patients in a mental hospital. One has obediently surrendered to her husband's choice of a younger wife, the other has seen her marriage fall victim to political violence. The histories of Maha and Um Saad, which typify Jordanian experience during the British Mandate that lasted through much of the 1940s, are framed and echoed by the comments of ``The Storyteller,'' who relates them to us in a dazzling and often very moving display of narrative art.' Kirkus Review
The Wordly Review
Nisanit
'Nisanit is one of the saddest, most tragic, painful, and depressing books I have read in a long time. Told in a passionate, breathtaking, masterful style by Fadia Faqir . . . Nisanit is her first novel and it shows real talent and mastery at storytelling.' Evelyne Accad, University of Illinois, World Literature Today
'Fadia Faqir is interested in people, not politics, or rather what politics do to people. Her people include a terrorist and a torturer and though she is never so crass as to attempt to empathise with either terrorism or torture to the point of justifying either she does try to understand and explain without passing judgement, which is both bold and brave. Fadia Faqir’s talent is evident in her ability to make the reader cringe for both tortured and torturer without once making this any kind of insulting intellectual exercise. This is a first novelist definitely to be rated an investment.' From 'The ridicule and laughter of women', The Independent Newspaper
In the House of Silence
(Co-translated with Shirly Ebber)
'Intriguing insights into the lives and thoughts of oncesilent Arab women...these new voices are imitating anew slant on life, on society and on ourselves.' The Jordan Times.
'In the House of Silence is a rare collection of autobiographical writings that throbs with the hardships, burdens and pleasures of being a woman writer in the Arab world. This is a book about every woman in the Arab world.' Abir Hamdan, Al-Raida Journal
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