A Starry Night

Yousef Al-Khader

The past erupts into Adam's life, as if to disrupt its monotony: an unbearable job, a bleak family life, a sole friend named Rawad, and time spent at Mama Samia's café. During one of his visits to the café, the past reaches him through an unknown man named Edgar. Although he had never seen him before, the strange man invites him to his apartment. He reveals secrets that still resist decay despite decades passing. He opens Pandora's Box, from which emerges the unexpected. Years after her death, his mother reappears, confirming that the dead do not completely disappear. Rather, they are capable of re-entering life and changing the destinies of the living... In this tightly knit and unpredictable plot, the novel also traces the effects of wars without explicitly mentioning them, following their imprint and personal scars that become more deeply embedded the older their memory gets. Yousef Al-Khader – a Syrian poet and novelist, has published three poetry collections and one novel, "The Hamster" (2021). He has also ventured into screenwriting and journalism. "A Starry Night" is his first novel with Dar Nofal. "The writer possesses the imagination of a child experiencing the initial wonder in perceiving things around him, giving free rein to his boundless imagination." - Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper