City of the Silenced

Mohammed Tarazi is a Lebanese novelist. His novels in Arabic have won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes including the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, the Ghassan Kanafani Prize for Fiction, the Tawfiq Bakkar Prize, and the Radwa Ashour Award for Arabic Literature. This novel, originally published in Arabic as Mikrufun katim sawt (Muted Microphone), won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction, and is his English-language debut. He lives in South Sudan.Jonathan Wright is an award-winning translator. His numerous translations from the Arabic include Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize), Hassan Blasim’s The Corpse Exhibition (winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), Sinan Antoon’s The Book of Collateral Damage, and Ahmed Taibaoui’s The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody (winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.) He lives in London.

“In gripping, absorbing, and profound tones, City of the Silenced makes a powerful, complex statement about the cost of politics for the ordinary Arab citizen today.”—Youssef Rakha, author of The Dissenters“This is a powerful work, one which stays with the reader long after the final page has been turned.”—Kay Heikkinen, translator of Granada: The Complete Trilogy“A unique and distinctive work . . . the characters are vivid, we can almost see, touch, and hear them—and feel their emotions.”—Rasha Adly, author of The Girl with Braided Hair“This novel transcends the limits of its own setting in space and time to unveil a general human reality for those of us in contemporary society who live in cities that stifle souls and kill dreams.”—Sarah Enany, translator of The Book Smuggler“Every character in this beautiful, elegiac work, shattering and calamitous as it is, represents one or another facet of their country. Whoever reads City of the Silenced will share their emotional pain and heartrending sorrow, but will also have the opportunity to see them prove that life and love are stronger than all barriers, real and imagined.”—Ahmed Taibaoui, author of The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody“This novel highlights the fragility of individual dreams. City of the Silenced is not a novel about staying silent, but about sophisticated oppression that makes this silence a forced choice. Through such repression, every individual choice is an act of resistance, even if it's simply a desire to stay alive.”—Ashraf El-Ashmawi, author of The Lady of Zamalek"I cried into this book's pages and clung to their edges, and wished it would last forever."—Mohamed Samir Nada, winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction