Synopses & Reviews
Set in Aleppo in 2012, when everyday life was metronomically punctuated by bombing, Roundabout of Death offers powerful witness to the violence that obliterated the ancient city's rich layers of history, its neighborhoods and medieval and Ottoman landmarks. The novel is told from the perspective of an ordinary man, a schoolteacher of Arabic for whom even daily errands become life-threatening tasks. He experiences the wide-scale destruction wrought upon the monumental Syrian metropolis as it became the stage for a vicious struggle between warring powers. Death hovers ever closer while the teacher roams Aleppo’s streets and byways, minutely observing the perils of urban life in an uncanny twist on Baudelaire's flâneur. The novel, a literary edifice erected as an unflinching response to the erasure of a once great city, speaks eloquently of the fragmentation of human existence and the calamities of war.
Review
“Some books stand as monuments to wars from which they arise. This is one of those books.” Elliot Ackerman, author of Green on Blue and Waiting for Eden
Review
"A masterful distillation of one of the great tragedies of the twenty-first century, as stripped of artifice and sentimentality as it is undergirded with insight and empathy. Roundabout of Death is essential reading." Dan Mayland, author of The Doctor of Aleppo
Review
"News reports and images have exposed the horrors of the Syrian crisis: millions of refugees, bombing and chemical weapons. But this powerful novel by Faysal Khartash makes the grim reality of survival through the fierce fighting in Aleppo truly comprehensible." Itamar Rabinovich, co-author of Syrian Requiem: The Civil War and its Aftermath
Review
"A heartwrenching and shocking work of historical fiction... the novel follows Jumaa, an unemployed Arabic teacher who struggles to live peacefully in a dangerous city... A powerful novel that takes a humane view of Syria’s devastation." Foreword Reviews
Review
"Khartash’s sparse and harrowing English-language debut offers an account of life in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War... Readers will find this fragmented tale of war-torn Aleppo and its displaced intellectuals chilling and insightful." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Faysal Khartash is a leading Syrian author. He lives in his native Aleppo, has written several novels and works as a schoolteacher while contributing to Syrian newspapers.
Max Weiss teaches the history of the modern Middle East at Princeton University. He has translated books by Nihad Sirees, Dunya Mikhail and Samar Yazbek.