The Frightened Ones

Out of the blue, Suleima's lover sends her a book he has written. Might this be the moment she finally feels she can understand him?An electrifying new voice from contemporary Syria on life in a climate of fear.Suleima and Nassim first meet in their therapist's tiny waiting room in Damascus. In the city's atmosphere of surveillance and anxiety, they begin a tenuous relationship.Some years later, after civil war breaks out, Nassim leaves Syria for Germany. He doesn't ask Suleima to come with him; instead, from thousands of miles away, he sends her a book he has written, a novel about a woman whose experiences are very close to her own. As Suleima reads, her past overwhelms her. Time begins to.