The Hostage

By زيد مطيع دماج

Book Overview

Set in the pre-revolution Yemen of the Imams, this novel depicts the experiences of a young boy who, having been taken hostage, in line with the Imam's general practice, as a pledge for his father's political obedience, is sent to serve as a young male attendant in the palace of the city governor. The growth of the boy's awareness, political, social and personal, is movingly portrayed against a background of bygone times whose decadence and injustice are presented with vivid satiric force.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156656140X
• ISBN13: 9781566561402
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Interlink Books
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

It is one of the best Arabic novels in this century.

It is rich in creativity and deep in its simplicity. It is about a real historical period in the Yemen's mid 20th century. Zayd Dammaj, the foremost Yemeni writer had made it more enjoyable to discover and to live a different world that it seems to be an imaginary one while it was indeed real. The greatness of the work is not only because of fulfilling the condition of a creative novel, but also because the author undertook the difficult task of amazingly writing a very important period of the temporary history of his people with a very creative, simple and interesting way. The locality of the novel had made it clear that it is the best way to reach the universality