Nothing is Entirely Black

Azza Al-Tawil

"«Nothing is Entirely Black» is the debut novel by Lebanese author Azza Al-Tawil. In it, she doesn't follow a complete and closed plot, but rather presents life through scenes, or through profound moments that encapsulate entire lifespans. Each chapter of the novel is a segment that jumps between life and death. There are stories, situations, and dialogues that bring the protagonist together with those around her. Faces disappear and others appear. But we follow transitional stages of her biography, as she experiences motherhood, loss, and love, and as she utterly fails to overcome her memory that extends to her from her ancestors and their fates.

The narrative does not adhere to a linear timeline, but rather leaps across the solid stones of memory, taking us to Homs and its bloody massacres, and then moving us to Paris, which the protagonist visits on different occasions. The return is always to Beirut, that city that has become too small for its dead, perhaps because of how many bodies of its children it swallowed in the past.

The novel states: "This was not a story purely based on imagination, but also a part of life. Therefore, it will not have the familiar endings where we know the fate of every character. This was a journey with life and death, and a confrontation with them. This was a segment of a sonata that the musician had not yet completed. It is said that he feared the curse of the Ninth Symphony specifically, and others claim that endings necessarily bring death. As for others, they do not ask because they realize that life is more like a metaphor than a traditional story."

A Lebanese writer residing in Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Grenoble, France. She works in publishing, having overseen the publication and distribution of works by international authors. She has numerous literary and social articles in Arabic websites and newspapers. «Nothing is Entirely Black» is her first novel published by Dar Noufel."

"