Stone of Happiness

Author's name: Azhar Gerges

With sarcastic language, Azhar Girgis lures us into the life of an obscure photographer whose ultimate goal is to live in peace and die quietly. Kamal, a photographer who carries his camera and roams the ancient markets and alleys, documenting the lives of the people and the city, one day finds himself entangled with an armed gang, which shocks him and turns his chest into an arena where bulls of fear compete. Events unfold and escalate dramatically, and he retrieves a silencer, trying, as is his wont, to bring a logical end to the journey of the helpless. It is a journey of suffering and happiness that begins with finding a small stone among the weeds in the Jinn Garden in Mosul, followed by a stop at the Martyrs' Bridge in Baghdad, where the Tigris fades and the memory of drowning is remembered. In this novel, Girgis's distinctive style of black comedy and a sarcastic sense of every calamity that fate befalls his heroes. A captivating novel that opens the wounds of memories and sews the bitterness of sorrow with sarcasm, according to disciplined aesthetics that avoid vulgarity and padding. The sarcasm here is not intended in and of itself, as much as it is a side effect of experiencing what happened in that strange country.

The 2023 Booker Prize Longlist