Planet of Clay (Al Macha’a)
Samar Yazbek, Leri Price (translation)Winner of English PEN Award
2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Longlist
First published as Al Macha’a in 2017 by Dar al-Adab in Lebanon
"Brave, rebellious & passionate ... Yazbek is no ordinary Syrian dissident." — Financial Times
"The Syrian writer Samar Yazbek evokes the horror of civil war with gripping lucidity." —Le Monde
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Rima, a young girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. Rima finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, & The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur'an like a mantra as everything & everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people think she's crazy, but she is no fool—the madness is in the battered city around her. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire & her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. In Planet of Clay,...
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Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer, novelist, & journalist. She was born in Jableh in 1970 & studied literature before beginning her career as a journalist & a scriptwriter for Syrian television & film. Her novel Planet of Clay, also published by World Editions, was a finalist for the National Book Award & longlisted for the Warwick Women in Translation Prize. Her accounts of the Syrian conflict include A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution & The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria.
Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. She has twice been a Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, in 2021 for her translations of Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay, & in 2019 for Khaled Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work.