Three First Novels, and Not One of Them Explains Itself

Three debuts by Syrian writers under thirty-five appeared within a fortnight of one another. Two were published outside the country. We read them together, which is not how they were written, but is how they are going to be received.

The missing paragraph

A generation of Syrian writing carried an explanatory burden: a page early on that sets the scene for somebody who is not from here. It is a real cost. It slows the opening, it flattens the voice, and it tells the local reader that they were not the person being addressed.

None of these three do it. Characters refer to places without locating them. A political fact is used as furniture rather than explained. One of the novels opens on a joke that only works if you already know the reference, and does not care.

Refusing to explain is a decision about who the book is for. All three have made the same one.

This has consequences. It will make translation harder and it will make some foreign reviews condescending. It also produces prose with a much better first page than the previous decade managed, because the first page is doing narrative work rather than orientation.

The second thing they share is subject matter, and it is not the one you would expect. All three are, substantially, about work: what people do all day, who they do it for, and what it costs them.

It is the least glamorous possible subject and, at this distance, obviously the right one.