Fadi Azzam


Fadi Azzam is a Syrian novelist and poet. Two of his novels in Arabic have been longlisted for the Arabic [Booker Prize|International Prize for Arabic Fiction]. In 2011, his debut novel Sarmada was published in English and in 2020 in a German edition. After the outbreak of the war in Syria, he went into exile in the United Kingdom. His work is part of contemporary Syrian literature#Literature in the context of [war and imprisonment|Syrian literature in the context of war and imprisonment].

Life and career

Azzam was born in As-Suwayda in southern Syria in 1973 and went to university in Damascus, graduating in 1998. He has published in Arabic newspapers and magazines, and he reported on arts and culture for Al Quds al-Arabi from 2007 to 2009. Further, he has published opinion columns in The New York Times and a number of newspapers across the Middle East and Arabian Gulf.
He has also worked with visual media, such as documentaries and cartoons.
In 2012, his debut novel Sarmada, about a Druze community in Syria, was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It was also translated into English and German. He was longlisted again in 2018 for his novel Bait Huddud, translated into English in 2024.
Some of his prose poems, such as "If You Are Syrian These Days …" and "This is Damascus, You Sons of Bitches" were translated by Ghada Alatrash and published by literary magazine ArabLit.

Selected works

  • سرمدة : رواية. Thaqāfah lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2011.
  • * Translated into English as Sarmada by Adam Talib.
  • رحلة الى قبور ثلاثة شعراء : آرثر رامبو، فرانز كافكا، فيرناندو بيسوا، برفقة رياض الصالح الحسين. Jadāwil lil-Nashr wa-al-Tarjamah wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2016.
  • بيت حدد : رواية. Dār al-Ādāb, 2017.
  • * Translated into English as Huddud's House by Ghada Alatrash, ISBN 9781623711153
  • الوصايا. Hachette Antoine, 2018.
  • The Calamity of the I, translated by Ghada Alatrash in Asymptote magazine
  • Poem "If you are Syrian these Days", translated by Ghada Alatrash
  • Poem "This is Damascus, You Sons of Bitches", translated by Ghada Alatrash