As a young man growing up in South Yemen, Imran finds himself drawn to Hawiya, the daughter of a high-ranking official in the ruling Marxist party. He departs Aden, the seaport city of his childhood, to study literature in Paris, hoping to “”see the sunset of capitalism with his own eyes.”” Years later, he returns to Yemen and meets Hawiya again—only to find that she now wears a niqab. The novel spans the 1960s to the early twenty-first century, from the independence of southern Yemen and the subsequent establishment of The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen to the Unification of Yemen in 1990 and the Arab Spring.
About the Author
Yemeni novelist Habib Abdulrab Sarori has been Professor of Computer Science at the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Rouen, France, since 1992, and has published literary works in both Arabic and French.
About the Publisher
Darf Publishers is a London-based independent publisher with diversity and inclusion at the heart of its work. Established in 1981 as an English imprint for the long-standing Libya-based Arab publisher Dar Fergiani, it focussed for three decades on publishing and reprinting classical history and travel books about the Middle East, Africa and Asia in English. Since 2014, Darf shifted focus to establish itself as a leading publisher in translating new emerging writers from around the world into English, including works of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books.