Night storyteller

Author's name: Rafiq Shami Publisher: Al-Jamal Publications for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 1989 Literary classification: Novel Brief about the book: Twenty-three German publishers refused to print this novel. None of them thought that a story about Damascus, and about oral storytelling, would interest any German reader, as Arabic literature was then an unknown continent. Rafiq Shami was an obscure writer who published seven books that did not achieve notable success. After hardship, a new director of one of the publishing houses took the manuscript and assigned one of his experts to revise the book, so he cut the wings of the Damascene story to turn it into a small, nice European novel with no trace of oral storytelling. That moment was decisive in Rafiq Shami's literary career. After thinking for three days, he informed the publisher that he refused this revision and did not want to change a single line of the book. The surprise was that the publisher replied that when he read the inspector's suggestions, he told him: No self-respecting writer would accept such a distortion of his novel. Therefore, he decided to assign another person to proofread the language of the text only and preserve it as Rafiq Shami narrated it. And that is what happened. This book was published in October 1989, and during the first year, 200,000 copies were sold, and translation rights were sold to 22 languages. After three years, the book won six literary awards, and its editions have exceeded two million copies to date.