Rafik Shami

“When Rafik Shami narrates from his books, a luminous starry sky rises above the listeners, and a feast of stories begins…”

Schami weaves the finest pearls of Arabic storytelling into a poetic novel: in a 19th-century Arab country, the wise King Salih rules. When the queen dies in an assassination attempt, the only daughter sinks into deep mourning. The heir to the throne has fallen in love with a fisherman, of which her father has no idea. When Karam, the coffee house narrator, learns of her illness, he decides to cure the princess. Every evening he gathers people in the palace who are fond of stories to bring the young woman back to life through the most beautiful stories: of courage and cowardice, of reason and superstition, of friendship and enmity, of love and the wisdom of the heart.

Rafik Shami’s books have been translated into 33 languages. The Syrian-German author has received numerous awards, including the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Prize Against Forgetting – For Democracy, and the Carl Zuckmayer Medal.