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English Summary/英文概要： This novel tells the story of a woman, Hanadi, born with phenomenal beauty, but stricken in adolescence by acromegaly - or
gigantism transforms into a monster, and is rejected by her mother, who has never accepted the loss, two years earlier, of her eldest child, the beautiful baby Hind. The mother, who regularly reshapes and reinvents her life, hides "the mutant" Hanadi in the attic of her kitchen, from the moment the phenomenal resemblance between the two little ones is no longer possible. The image blurs between the late Hind and her hideous mirror, for both mother and daughter…The teenager, alone, feeds herself with books and other publications from the random boxes and crates piled up in the attic, before fleeing from a city plagued by the stench of a civil war (which never ends) to France. As she wanders between Paris (and its suburbs) and Beirut (a working-class district), between love and the illnesses of love, the novel, constructed like a puzzle, opens with Hanadi’s return to her country, where she revisits her relationship with her mother, who died of Alzheimer’s, as well as the daily life of her city, transformed and disfigured like herself, and lost between a legendary past and a deformed present (like other Mediterranean cities)
The novel tells "its stories" only through the destinies of individuals, of modest background, who suffer, alone and unprepared, the blows of History without understanding its tenets (like the destiny of the absent father), in the blinding fog of oblivion, denial and violence…In cities also sick with gigantism...
Awards/获奖情况： • A young girl suffering of acromegalic gigantism
• A moving metaphorical novel
• Winner of the 2025 Zayed Book Award
2001 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
2016/2017 Al Owais Award for Literature
2015 Man Booker lnternationallonglist
2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction
Distinctions & recognitions
Hoda Barakat was decorated with the’Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’by the French cultural minister in February 2002. She also received the’Chevalier de l’Ordre du Merite National’2008
She has been or is presently on the advisory board of several magazines, including Qantara (Paris, 1997-2000), Mediterraneennes (Paris) and Da Qui (Bari, Italie) etc...
She was a resident at the Institut d’Etudes Avancees de Nantes from Nov. 2010 to March 2011.
She was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for the acadeil1!c year 2011/2012 and the IAS CEU Budapest 2017/18
She is member of the prestigious" Montgomery Fellowship" Dartmouth since 2019.
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About the Author/作者介绍： Hoda Barakat
(born 1952) is a Lebanese novelist. She lived most of her early life in Beirut before moving to Paris, where she now resides. She has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories, and a book of memoirs. Her works are originally written in Arabic and have been translated into English, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Romanian, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, and Greek. Her work often explores themes of trauma and war; three of her early novels are narrated by male characters living in the margins of society during the Lebanese civil war. Her third novel, Harit al-miyah (The Tiller of Waters), won the 2001 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Her 2019 novel Bareed Al-Lay! (The Night Mail) won the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). |
