Ausverkauft: Der Literarische Salon mit Dima Wannous

Was nun in Syrien?

Unfortunately, Samar Yazbek has fallen ill. Fortunately, Dima Wannous has spontaneously agreed to come to Cologne so that the important topic of Syria will not be omitted at lit.Cologne. Wannous, born in Damascus in 1982, is one of Syria's most prominent writers and political activists. She now lives in London. Her most recent essays on the fall of the Assad regime and the report on her return to Damascus, which have been published in several languages (in German in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung), are among the most impressive and literarily captivating texts on the Syrian revolution. Wannous became internationally renowned in 2007 with the short story collection "Tafâsîl" (Engl. "Dark Clouds over Damascus"), which forms an everyday panopticon in the run-up to the Syrian revolution that began in 2011. In 2017, she published the novel "Die Verängstigten", which also appeared in German translation: in it, the narrator Suleima receives a manuscript from her former lover Nassim, who fled to Germany after the outbreak of war. The novel was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Literature in 2018.