Description

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Khamila narrates her experience as a young woman living in Sur, a city which quickly transforms from a rich trading centre into a place of fear and murder at the hands of extremist oppressors.

Home to a mixed community of Muslims, Copts, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Indians, Europeans and Africans, Sur is plunged into turmoil by an extremist revolution orchestrated by the Righteous one. An obscure figure, the Righteous One is drawing followers from the poor and discontented to his jihad. Sur and all its communities represent the camp of apostasy and must be defeated. The city begins to prepare itself for the onslaught. Together with other young women, Khamila is led away to a house for female captives.

Kept in seclusion and guarded by eunuchs, these women are instructed in the new faith and readied for marriage and sexual servitude. Despairing of rescue and determined to resist her fate, Khamila learns she is to be married off to the Righteous One himself. She appears to be rescued by one of the eunuchs, Lulu, but awakens from her dream, again and again, to find herself still a captive.

About the Author

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Born in Sudan in 1960, Amir Tag Elsir is a Sudanese writer. He studied medicine in Egypt and now works as a doctor in Qatar. From an early age he wrote poetry and has been writing novels since the 1980s. He has published over 30 books including novels, biographies and poetry. Some of his most well received titles have been The Dowry of Cries, The Copt's Worries and The French Perfume (all 2009) and The Crawling of the Ants (2010). His novel The Grub Hunter (2010) was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2011) before being translated into English and Italian. The novel 366 (2013) was longlisted for the prize in 2014 and was among the winners of the 2015 Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel. The Resort of the Enchantresses (2015) was also longlisted for the 2017 Prize. His works have been translated into several langauges