Their sons after them

Author's name: Nikola Matyudar Publisher: Dar Al-Mada for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2022 Literary classification: Novel Brief about the book: Brief about the book: A novel about the marginalized French East that we do not know, about a region cast into shadows by economic decline, and dreams extinguished with the closing of factories. The fates of people diverge and intertwine in a social fabric during four consecutive summers in the 1990s. From 1992 to 1998, stories of children and parents branch out, fueled by frantic dreams of escaping a bleak reality. Fates resemble each other, like an eternal curse. Teenagers rebelled against family norms, and fathers were shaken by life with its sharp details. Everyone swims in the orbit of misery, hoping for a future that will lift them from the whirlpool of troubling details of the Wadi area. The events revolve in a fluctuating social chemistry between alcohol, hashish, love, rejection, ambition, and failure — between desires and reality, where stories are stained with issues of identity, migrants, Arabs, marginalized French suburbs, and rejected politics. So how was the miserable life in the Wadi area shaped into the question of the sense of belonging? And how did the rusty iron furnaces forge the fates of fathers and their children?