A collection of 36 short stories from a Raqqa, Syria native whose home was commandeered by ISIS and later destroyed by coalition airstrikes.
Musa Al-Halool developed these stories based on a sense of embitterment toward the Syrian regime. Now, after his country has fallen from the grips of an obtuse and rigidly bureaucratic state into the uncertainties of war . . . he presents his stories as the response of one still-same voice in the midst of madness.
Musa Al-Halool’s stories depict a Kafkaesque Middle Eastern world. The collection opens with eight political fables in a chapter titled Ratistan . . . or the country of Rats. These fables introduce themes which are picked up and developed in the later stories or simply serve as counterpoint to the longer pieces.
The Dusk Visitor is an object lesson for Western readers. In just a few words, it invokes the warnings of Ernest Hemingway about the dangers of Fascism in 1920s Italy and the Spanish Civil War of the 19
