A journalist residing in Buenos Aires turns forty and decides to write his first book, but what will he really write about? About sad poets? Ex-girlfriends? Boats? The man struggles to find a starting point. He writes notes about events that happened, moving between memories, dreams, and dialogues, but he feels that the life he lived was richer and more intense than everything he wrote. Was it really richer?
In the novel “The Well,” Juan Carlos Onte writes, through a flowing text that breaks down the barriers between times and places, feeling and subconsciousness, about a hero with a strange nature, marginalized, angry for no apparent reason, and always in some kind of misunderstanding that makes him unable to communicate. with the others.
At the end of the novel, Onetti leaves us with a shocking feeling, as we wonder about the nature of the work we read: Was it a novel, a dream, or do you see it as mere delirium?
“Amazing is a hidden treasure in Aleppo,” says one of the novel’s heroines. In her work, Maha Hassan tries to bring this amazement through writing and memories to re-draw Aleppo and its ancient popular neighborhoods, its rituals of living, the simplicity of its people, and their small dreams, before the war comes and destroys all of this in its path.
Relying on a unique technique inspired by the names of Arab and international novels and the titles of the chapters, the heroes of “The Amazing Neighborhood” tell us their story from “Zarqa’s Imagination” and “Beirut Nightmares” to the house of “Sleeping Beauties.”
It is a story about love, childhood memories, intentional killing, the emotional placenta, and the role of literature in our lives
