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Dima Wannous gives voice to contemporary female experience in Damascus, in a novel that has grabbed attention around the world

About the Author

Dima Wannous (Author)
Dima Wannous was born in 1982. She is a writer and translator who studied French literature at Damascus University and the Sorbonne. She is the author of a short story collection, Details (2007), and two novels, The Chair (2008) and The Frightened Ones (2017), which was shortlisted for the Arabic International Prize for Literature.

Elisabeth Jaquette (Translator)
Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from the Arabic, whose work includes Basma Abdel Aziz's The Queue (shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize), Rania Mamoun's Thirteen Months of Sunrise, and Adania Shibli's Minor Detail. She is also Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association.

Reviews

‘THE FRIGHTENED ONES eloquently locates the crux of the Syrian experience, during a time of brutal repression. In this brilliant novel, Dima Wannous tells us the story of the revolution through the voices of two women . . . With its economy of language, this captivating novel leaves us astounded by the ability of literature to create beauty amidst pain.’
*Elias Khoury*

'A complex tale of revolution, displacement, delusional love . . . most memorable in surreal details and glancing tales. The analyst Kamil emerges as the novel’s quiet hero – strangely reminiscent of Dr Rieux in Camus’s The Plague'
*Guardian*

The nerve-stretching tension and horror of life in Assad’s Syria is conveyed in this cunningly constructed novel… [The Frightened Ones] shortlisted for the Arabic International Prize for Literature, examines how fear strangles lives. It’s brutal and unsettling
*Sunday Times*

A brilliant and terrifying split-personality novel... The novel is full of vivid and terrifying descriptions of the effects of fear
*Al Fanar*