In this powerful and moving book, Maram al- Masri, the award-winning Syrian poet who has lived much of her life in Paris, presents us with a chronicle of the lives of others - women and some of their children - who exist unseen and unheard in contemporary France. Many of the characters whose real or imagined lives she discloses are isolated as individuals; they endure their lives in quiet desperation, prisoners in one way or another of a great silence. Writing in Arabic and French, Maram al-Masri has donated her voice to breaking that silence with clarity, brevity and compassion, a voice which now resonates throughout the English-speaking world in this fine translation by the Irish poet, Theo Dorgan.
