A World Without Maps

Description

Questions and answers intertwine in this novel, making it sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. As the debate unfolds, doubt remains ever-present, provocative, and unsettling.

Why does Ammouriya remain a world without maps? And for Alaa El-Din Naguib, is there any way to escape its labyrinth in his passionate, turbulent, and contradictory confessions about the death of Najwa Al-Amiri, the astonishing woman who embodies both the recklessness and lust of the Al-Sawalmeh tribe and the calculations of profit and loss instilled in her by her family and community?

And where does this all fit within his story with his past, with his brothers Safaa and Adham, his uncle Hossam Al-Raad, his aunt Nusrat, and his rural and tribal ancestors, and with his other story—his story with the impossible and the madness lurking within Najwa Al-Amiri, within himself, within their era, within all of Ammouriya?

Two great novelists, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Abdul Rahman Munif, combined their astonishing talents in a unique and creative work, evoking an atmosphere brimming with bewilderment and discontent, desire and ecstasy, in the creation of this city, Ammouria, which the reader has never visited before, and whose mysteries will haunt them for a long time after they do.