In “American neighborhood’, Douaihy stays close to a narrative he’s experienced before, and successfully captures the societal transformations that affect his country.

While the action seems to be torn out of today’s newspapers, it is actually set in the late 1970s and early 1980s when a rebellion against the current leader’s father was brutally suppressed. In chilling terms, the narrator describes her embrace of fanaticism and her rejection of the middle ground.

Add this one to the growing list of thought-provoking novels about Muslim women caught in the crossfire of politics and personal life.

The Syrian writer Khalid Khalifa moves inside Damascus from one neighborhood to another, moving in what he describes as “bourgeois displacement”. The writer says he doesn’t believe he is entitled to the honor of saying he shares the suffering of real displacement in refugees camps.