Al Alam Hotel

Alam Hotel by AI Smith ... "There are two ways to read this novel, but in the end, you will only read it in one of them." This is what AI Smith says in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, a sentence that can be applied to all her novels. AI Smith, strongly nominated in recent years for the Nobel Prize, is considered one of the most important English voices on the global literary stage now. In a survey recently conducted by The Times, she topped the scene as the best living British writer, followed in the survey by Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith. AI Smith has reached the short list of the Man Booker Prize four times for the novels: "The Coincidence" in 2005, "How to Be Both" in 2014, "Autumn" in 2016, without winning, and many writers consider this a great injustice and believe she deserves to win long ago. The fourth novel that made the Man Booker short list is the one we are discussing now, "Alam Hotel," published in 2001 by Hamish Hamilton. The novel also reached the final list of the Orange Prize for Fiction (formerly the Women's Prize). It also won the British Encore Award for the second novel in 2002. "Alam Hotel," the hidden name behind continuing grief and loss, and passing through time or having time pass through us as guests inside it. The author says in an interview: "I love language, and I also love butterflies and the shape of clouds," and all of this is evident in this novel, in which Smith plays with words and punctuation, enriching the depth of language and the disturbance of her characters, so that the joy of literature is intertwined with pain and longing.