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The Calligrapher's Secret, by Rafik Schami
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A new international bestseller from the award-winning author of The Dark Side of Love
In the narrow streets of the old city of Damascus, a rumor is circulating: Nura, the beautiful wife of the famous calligrapher Hamid Farsi, has escaped. Why would she leave behind a life envied by so many? Could it be that she was the victim of a kidnapping by one of her husband's enemies?
Even as a young man, Hamid Farsi is acclaimed as a master of the art of calligraphy. But as time goes by, he sees that weaknesses in the Arabic language and its script limit its uses in the modern world. In a secret society, he works out schemes for radical reform, never guessing what risks he is running and how far the purists are willing to go to stop him.
His beautiful wife, Nura, is ignorant of the great plans on her husband's mind. She knows only his cold, avaricious side and so it is no wonder she feels flattered by the attentions of his amusing, lively young apprentice. And so begins a passionate love story--the love of a Muslim woman and a Christian man.
- Sales Rank: #1503419 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Interlink Publishing
- Published on: 2011
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.34" w x 5.56" l, 1.13 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 444 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Warmly observed, richly detailed, and often bold and exciting, Schami's fine portrait of life in Damascus, Syria, in the middle of the 20th century is filled with a compelling set of characters. Noura is a Muslim girl who looks like Audrey Hepburn. Rami Arabi, her father, a noted sheikh, is frustrated that those who attend his mosque "treat God like a waiter in a restaurant." Salman is a Christian boy, hated by his drunkard father and devoted to his dog, and to Noura. Nasri Abbani is a wealthy man from an important family, but also a hopeless playboy, his business kept afloat only because of his clever clerk, Tawfiq. When Nasri sets foot in the studio of Hamid Farsi, the leading calligrapher in all of Syria, tragic and wondrous events are set in motion that will affect all in the most emphatic ways. Schami, born in Damascus, is one of Germany's most respected writers, bridging Arab and Western culture with his exquisite storytelling. A novel to be savored. (Jan.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Schami�s intricately woven tale of mid-twentieth-century Damascus is brimming with love and jealousy, prejudice, politics, and intrigue. His lively cast of characters includes Hamid Farsi, a renowned Muslim calligrapher, and his wife, Nura, a talented dressmaker and daughter of a famous scholar. Nasri Albani, widely known as a philanderer, is obsessed with Nura. And there�s Salman, a poor Christian youth who becomes Hamid�s assistant, learning the calligrapher�s art from the ground up. Hamid�s talents place his work in high demand, but when he detects weaknesses in the Arabic language, and secretly seeks to make radical reforms, he comes under the purists� scrutiny. Though Hamid is famous, he remains a stranger to Nura long after their wedding day, leaving her isolated. Until one day she disappears, setting in motion a series of events that, like a whirlpool, never stops swirling until the novel�s end. A captivating and enlightening read, enriched by the sights, sounds, and sensuality of Damascus, and by the author making his mark by bridging the Arab world of his upbringing with his adopted home in the West. --Deborah Donovan
Review
'Warmly observed, richly detailed, and often bold and exciting, Schami's fine portrait of life in Damascus, Syria, in the middle of the 20th century is filled with a compelling set of characters. Noura is a Muslim girl who looks like Audrey Hepburn. Rami Arabi, her father, a noted sheikh, is frustrated that those who attend his mosque 'treat God like a waiter in a restaurant.' Salman is a Christian boy, hated by his drunkard father and devoted to his dog, and to Noura. Nasri Abbani is a wealthy man from an important family, but also a hopeless playboy, his business kept afloat only because of his clever clerk, Tawfiq. When Nasri sets foot in the studio of Hamid Farsi, the leading calligrapher in all of Syria, tragic and wondrous events are set in motion that will affect all in the most emphatic ways. Schami, born in Damascus, is one of Germany's most respected writers, bridging Arab and Western culture with his exquisite storytelling. A novel to be savored.' Publishers Weekly 20101025 The background to this bold and political novel is cosmopolitan: Jews, Armenians, Arabs and Iranians live cheek by jowl in Schami's Damascus. Finely rendered into English by Anthea Bell, The Calligrapher's Secret is a celebration of diversity. Rightly so; after all, as Serani, Farsi's old master points out: 'the Quran was revealed in Mecca and Medina, recorded in Baghdad, recited in Egypt, but written most beautifully of all in Istanbul. - Andre Naffis-Sahely --Times Literary Supplement
'Suspensful, spectacular, and searing are not adjectives one would use to describe The Calligrapher's Secret. Intriguing, intelligent, and multifaceted are far more accurate to convey what readers can expect from this well written story about love, art, family and Syrian culture.' --New York Journal of Books
'Suspensful, spectacular, and searing are not adjectives one would use to describe The Calligrapher's Secret. Intriguing, intelligent, and multifaceted are far more accurate to convey what readers can expect from this well written story about love, art, family and Syrian culture.' --New York Journal of Books
'Suspensful, spectacular, and searing are not adjectives one would use to describe The Calligrapher's Secret. Intriguing, intelligent, and multifaceted are far more accurate to convey what readers can expect from this well written story about love, art, family and Syrian culture.' --New York Journal of Books
'Suspensful, spectacular, and searing are not adjectives one would use to describe The Calligrapher's Secret. Intriguing, intelligent, and multifaceted are far more accurate to convey what readers can expect from this well written story about love, art, family and Syrian culture.' --New York Journal of Books
'Suspensful, spectacular, and searing are not adjectives one would use to describe The Calligrapher's Secret. Intriguing, intelligent, and multifaceted are far more accurate to convey what readers can expect from this well written story about love, art, family and Syrian culture.' --New York Journal of Books
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
"My dream is of an Arabic language that can express all nuances of sound from the North to the South Poles."
By Mary Whipple
Set in Damascus, Syria, from 1931 through 1956, The Calligrapher's Secret is an impressionistic and romantic novel which strolls leisurely, dropping in on first one character and then another, moving back and forth in time and across ethnic, religious, and social groups. Several main characters and families share their lives and problems, and, in the process, convey an intimate picture of life in Damascus, filled with vibrant descriptions of the city, its neighborhoods, and its varied social life. The novel is much more than a series of domestic stories, however. It is also a serious exploration of the issues surrounding Arabic calligraphy, issues so serious that some who want to make Arabic script more modern, so it can accommodate new words from science and philosophy, face death threats and personal attacks by traditionalists. These consider the language of the Quran, the word of God, to be sacred, inviolable, unchanging.
These two focuses of the novel are connected through Hamid Farsi, a calligrapher dedicated to modernizing the Arabic script, even as his personal life, his relationships, and his unsatisfactory marriage to a beautiful young woman are unfolding and entertaining the reader. The complications in these intertwining tales of love, family life, and daily survival seem to occur at random, with the novel sometimes leaping years ahead to foretell endings, then backing up to fill in the blanks. The more intellectual (and more interesting) issues regarding script and calligraphy are almost exclusively the province of Hamid Farsi, and they seem to float on a different plane above most of the many domestic plots of the novel, with a treatise explaining the religious issues about script appearing at the end.
The novel opens in summer, 1957, and Noura, the twenty-year-old wife of Hamid Farsi, one of the most esteemed calligraphers in Damascus, has run away. Backing up to 1942, the novel then reveals her family and life at that time. Her father, Sheikh Rami Arabi, a famous scholar, bemoans the lack of religious feeling among some of his students. Noura's schooling, which she loves, as opposed to the lack of schooling available for a poor Christian boy named Salman, who is taught to read and write by a bright young female friend, emphasizes class differences and the difference in opportunities. Eventually, Noura is married to Hamid Farsi, an older widower, the wedding preparations being particularly interesting in their details, though Noura is miserable in her marriage. When Salman eventually (and coincidentally) gets a job as errand boy for Hamid Farsi, the stage is set for the blossoming of love with Noura, and their eventual running away (which we have known since page three).
At four hundred forty-four pages, this is a long book, and the plot is not really a plot as one may be accustomed to knowing it. Though the subplots are often connected, they are not unified in the traditional sense. Noura and Salman disappear, and nothing more is heard of them for almost a hundred fifty pages. Instead, the novel devolves into an analysis of aspects of Arabic script, the Sunni/Shiite conflicts about language, and conflicts between traditionalists and progressives which have apparently rent the Arab world. If someone believes that the Quran is the word of God and that its language is sacred, does that also mean that no new word can be added to the lexicon even fifteen hundred years later? If the issues raised here in this 1950s setting have not yet been resolved, they may explain why so few academic studies from the Arab world make their way into print in the west--and maybe why they may not make it into print in their own countries. Mary Whipple
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
More brilliance from Schami
By Cary Watson
In this year of the Arab Spring, there's no better guide to the discontents, the tensions, and the psychology of the Arab world than the novels of Rafik Schami. Schami, an Arab-Christian, fled his native Syria in 1971 for Germany. After working in menial jobs he got his degree in chemistry and began working in the chemical industry. In the early '80s he became a full-time writer, writing in German. Since then he's won virtually every German literary prize there is, but only a handful of his novels have been translated into English. That's a tragedy because Schami has to rank as one of the world's great novelists.
Schami's previous novel, The Dark Side of Love, was a multi-generational saga about forbidden love and clan feuds that covered Syrian history from the early 1900s to 1970. It was a brilliant effort, filled with dozens of memorable characters, a plot that skipped back and forth across the decades, and a breathless mix of tragedy, violence and earthy humour.
The Calligrapher's Secret is almost a scaled-down version of The Dark Side of Love. The story is set in Damascus from 1947-58 and tells the tale of how the calligrapher of the title loses his wife, Noura, to his apprentice Salam. Although this novel doesn't have an epic scope, Schami has the epic ambition to try and explain what it is that keeps the Arab world stuck with one foot in the modern world and the other a thousand years in the past. In Schami's view the problem is that Arabs are unwilling to accept change on a personal or cultural level.
Hamid Farsi, the calligrapher of the title, has the ambition to reform Arabic so that it becomes a more modern language, a language that can be used for more than just poety and religious writings. Naturally enough, Farsi faces opposition from religious fanatics who don't believe that the language of the Koran can be altered in any way, and conservative politicians who can only contemplate change that takes place at a glacial pace. What makes Farsi a tragic figure is that as much as he's a radical in his professional life, in his private life he is cursed with all the sexism and misogyny of the most traditional Arab male. He marries the beautiful Noura while she's still a teenager and treats her like dirt from the word go. This drives Noura into the arms of Salman, and it's this event that brings about Hamid's ultimate downfall.
This bare bones synopsis only gives a hint of the plots within plots in this novel. Schami structures his novels like folktales, in which even the most minor of events or characters can have a profound influence on the plot, and people can wander in and out of the story almost at will. And Schami loves creating characters. Even the most minor of figures is given a backstory, and Schami often tells us what happened to these people long after they've had any influence on the plot. The main characters are superb, particularly Farsi who is largely despicable, but is wholly believable and, to a degree, pitiable.
The only misstep Schami makes is to squeeze much of Farsi's story into the last quarter of the book. By that point we have quite a hate on for him and the most likable characters, Noura and Salman, have left the scene for good. This almost makes this last section of the book feel like an appendix rather than an organic part of the novel, but it's really only the most minor of flaws. Here's hoping that more of Schami's novels are made available in English.
You can read more of my reviews at JettisonCocoon dot com.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Absorbing and insightful
By K. P. Centofanti
As a synopsis has already been gracefully written by the other reviewers I will simply say that this this is an intricate wander with a myriad of characters, each thread of their lives lightly and skilfully unravelled until a beautiful tale is told. In the very best tradition of storytelling, we are spell bound by the twist and turns and allowed to ponder, during the journey, on the nature of humanity, its moral values, its defects and its qualities. Like the magnificence of the calligraphy it describes, a subtle pattern emerges, all finely woven together with great love. The translator has taken up the story as if it was his own and allowed it to flow transparently in English as I am sure it does in German. It is a profoundly enriching experience to read and its delightful length makes it all the more satisfying.
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