"In his seventh novel, 'In Praise of Escape,' Khalil Al-Naeimi returns to the ethereal raw material he possesses: his autobiography, parts of which appeared in 'The Thing,' 'The Outcasts,' 'The Empty Being,' and 'The Rupture.' It is a biography that blends imagination and writing unfettered by plot constraints and chronological sequence. Therefore, his texts appear closer to autofiction, as they combine lived experience linked to biography with the projection of imagined situations onto the self, which frees us from conformity with the events he lived through and, through writing, seeks to question identity, memory, and the singularity of the 'I'." Muhammad Berrada **** "'In Praise of Escape' is a novel in the form of an autobiography, a biography teeming with other lives, and a text about the history of a farce and a historical farce—a tragedy, and a pure testimony to the cunning of a shabby history that welcomes dreamers and shoots their souls before the magnificent crawl towards the dream. Khalil Al-Naeimi has crafted a historical segment in the form of an autobiography, speaking of defilement and innocence, lies and truth, and of death and the dreams of writing." Faisal Darraj ***** "Khalil Al-Naeimi's novel 'In Praise of Escape,' in a Syrian edition for the first time among the works of this unique novelist and extraordinary traveler who has traversed most parts of the Earth, is finally published in his homeland." Khalil Souilieh