Planet of Clay - by Samar Yazbek (Paperback)

About the Book

First published as Al Macha'a in 2017 by Dar al-Adab in Lebanon.

Book Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

The new novel Planet Of Clay gives a haunting and unflinching look at the horrors of war - the bombing, the starvation, the fear - all seen through the eyes of Rima, a young girl with a vibrant imagination."--NPR

"Planet of Clay is a devastating novel about human resilience and fragility in a time of war."--Foreword Reviews, starred review

Rima, a young girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. Rima finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur'an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people think she's crazy, but she is no fool--the madness is in the battered city around her. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta--where, between bombings, she writes her story. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.

Review Quotes

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE

Praise for Samar Yazbek

"One of Syria's most gifted novelists." --CNN

"Yazbek's is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places." --The Guardian

Praise for Planet of Clay

"Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay is a lyrical and moving portrait of Rima, a young neurodivergent girl living through the horrors of the Syrian civil war. Rima yearns to be free but is always, quite literally, tied to her mother, her brother, his friend, the bed, the wall, even as everyone runs around her, like Yazbek's fitting stream-of-consciousness prose, as bombs explode and gunfire blasts and the city collapses. This extraordinary translation by Leri Price conjures Rima's own secret planets, a world of colors, and another life."--National Book Awards Judges Citation

"Wrenching ... offers a remarkable account of wartime despair." --Publishers Weekly

"Planet of Clay gives a haunting and unflinching look at the horrors of war--the bombing, the starvation, the fear--all seen through the eyes of Rima, a young girl with a vibrant imagination." --NPR

"Planet of Clay is a devastating novel about human resilience and fragility in a time of war." --Foreword Reviews, starred review

"The young, mute narrator of this compassionate novel becomes a poignant emblem of the Syrian women confined by war...a bold portrayal of besieged people." --The Observer

"Samar Yazbek has written a novel that manages to speak to the urgency of telling and listening to the most vulnerable of stories--stories by people who in other circumstances might have had more than one story to tell."--Words Without Borders

"Rima is a fantastic character." --Kirkus Reviews

"With the publication of his novel, "Planet of Clay", Islamic Samar Yazbek offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language (ably translated from Arabic into English by Leri Price) and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty. A compelling, heart-wrenching, memorable read." --Midwest Book Review

"The Syrian writer Samar Yazbek evokes the horror of civil war with gripping lucidity in her novel Planet of Clay." --Le Monde

"With the brazenness typical of her recent work, Samar Yazbek immerses us in the horror of the Syrian conflict, and the way it resonates in the flesh and minds of those who are living it. It is through the women whom the author has met on the ground at certain moments throughout this war that she describes the capacity for resistance in the face of atrocity." --Libération

"An ingenious character and a literary approach on the verge of the unimaginable. Samar Yazbek's novel is brave on many levels." --Göteborgs-Posten

"Planet of Clayis a deeply original, almost surreal fantasia, written in a simple, clear style. But the surrealistic stroke is raised, because the evil and the suffering surrounding Rima are real to such a great extent ... A novel like Planet of Clay filters through all our conscious and unconscious blinkers." --Arbetarbladet

"We others can only read--and cry." --Kristeligt Dagblad

"The book left this reader very touched, beyond the cruel reality it describes, because of Yazbek's sense of details." --Weekendavisen

"An invaluable voice from Syria." --Dagens Nyheter

"The text is true--literally true, that is. How can you truly describe a rational chemical warfare? By letting the process behind the sense of the text break. A radical and visionary move made by Samar Yazbek." --Sveriges Radio

Praise for A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution

"Amid the horrific news about Syrian dissidents, mass killings, and government claims of terrorists, this unique document, written in the first months of the uprising, is a chronicle both of objective events and the visceral and psychic responses of an impassioned activist and artist ... The book weaves journalistic reporting with intimate, poetic musings on an appalling reality." --Publishers Weekly

"A feverish, nightmarish, immediate account." --The Guardian

"An impassioned and harrowing memoir of the early revolt." --New York Review of Books

"Arresting, novelistic prose ... uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital." --The Spectator

"An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained." --Kirkus Reviews

"The heartbreaking diary of a woman who risked her life to document the regime's brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators." --The Inquirer

"A remarkable, devastating account of the three increasingly dangerous trips that Yazbek made to northern Syria in 2012 and 2013, sneaking over the Turkish border each time." --The Nation

"In her book, Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, she shows the reality of what's happening there and brings us stories of many people who risk their lives in the struggle for freedom. The insight that Yazbek offers into the complex and bloody conflict is both incredibly valuable and inspiring." --PEN Transmissions

Praise for Cinnamon

"There's a pulsing vitality to the lives of the characters, despite their brutal circumstances, in this compelling novel by PEN Pinter Prize-winning Syrian author Yazbek." --Publishers Weekly

"Yazbek's prowess is her ability to demonstrate the freeing qualities of love between two women, but also her strong and realistic grasp of Syrian society. She positions these relations in a complex web of constellations built on discretion, racial hierarchies, financial interests, and abuse." --Asymptote Journal

Praise for The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria

"A powerful and moving account of her devastated homeland ... it bears comparison with George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as a work of literature, Yazbek is a superb narrator ... one of the first political classics of the twenty-first century." --The Guardian

"Brave, rebellious and passionate ... Yazbek is no ordinary Syrian dissident." --Financial Times

"An eloquent, gripping and harrowing account of the country's decline into barbarism by an incredibly brave Syrian." --Irish Times

"Gripping ... Does the important job of putting faces to the numbing numbers of Syria's crisis." --The Economist

"Samar Yazbek's searing new book about her Syrian homeland is a testament to the indomitable spirit of her countrymen in their struggle against the Assad regime ... shocking, searing, and beautiful." --Daily Beast

"Gripping." --Washington Post

About the Author

Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer, novelist, and journalist. She was born in Jableh in 1970 and studied literature before beginning her career as a journalist and a scriptwriter for Syrian television and film. Her novels include Child of Heaven, Clay, Cinnamon, In Her Mirrors, and Planet of Clay. Her accounts of the Syrian conflict include A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution and The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. Yazbek's work has been translated into multiple languages and has been recognized with numerous awards--notably, the French Best Foreign Book Award, the PEN-Oxfam Novib, PEN Tucholsky, and PEN Pinter awards.

Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. Price's translation of Khaled Khalifa's Death Is Hard Work was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature (US) and winner of the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. Her translation of Khaled Khalifa's No Knives in the Kitchens of This City was shortlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award. Price's other recent translations include Sarab by award-winning writer Raja Alem.