Qaf, killer, Sin, happy

Author's name: Abdullah Al-Basiss

The police stormed Umm Gharib's house and ransacked it. There they found our cigarette packs, fighting sticks, tea-making utensils, the remains of Walid Abu Samra's broken oud, and other things that had been in the house before its inhabitants fled during the invasion. Among the items they found was a large sandal lying in the yard. The friends quickly recognized it when the police showed it to them at the station during the investigation: it was Jonker's sandal. Detective Majid finds in the mystery of Saeed Jonker's murder a reason for his monotonous days to continue. He reopens an investigation that had been closed for many years, digging into a past everyone had agreed to move on from. The narrative takes us back and forth between the 1990s and the present, between reality and magic, and is rich with nuance, offering the reader a novel brimming with anticipation and surprise. Abdullah Al-Basiss is a poet and novelist from Kuwait. He won the Sharjah International Book Fair Award in 2017 for Best Arabic Novel for his novel "The Taste of the Wolf." He also published the novel (Stray Memories) and a collection of Nabati poetry (Diwan Al-Afkar).