Where Is My Name?
Dima al-Shukr
It is the nineteenth century and Qamour, a young Syrian girl, is working as maid in the house of the British consul, Richard Francis Burton, translator of The Thousand and One Nights into English. Qamour travels with Richard and his wife Isabel, living in London and Trieste. These trips allow Qamour to discover two new talents: manuscript copying and chronicling. The second task is dubious, marred by a personal wound of Qamour and an even greater one of her city, Damascus, in the 1860 massacre. The British consul gives her the task of collecting stories and eyewitness testimonies of the massacre, although the book will be published without the name of its female author. Where Is My Name? brings to life events and conflicts of the past, highlighting the sufferings of ordinary people and foreign, orientalist views of Arab cultural heritage and identity.
Publisher
Dar al-Adab
Nomination
2022 Longlist
Dima al-Shukr
About the author
Dima al-Shukr is a Syrian critic and translator, born in Damascus in 1972. She writes articles for the Arab cultural press. In the field of literary criticism, she has published Prosody, Past and Present and Arabic Prosody in the 13th Century (Post Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad), co-written with the French researcher Bruno Paoli. She has also published books translated from French, including In Praise of Borders by Régis Debray and The Mirror of Damascus by Jean-Pierre Filiu.