Ghada al-Samman

Ghada al-Samman

Ghada al-Samman (* 1942 in Damascus , Syria ) is a Syrian writer and journalist who has lived in Paris since the mid-1980s .

Life

Al-Samman comes from a long-established, conservative Damascus family. She is distantly related to the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani . Her father was the President of Damascus University for some time . Her youth was shaped by her father, as her mother died when she was a toddler. In 1962 she published her first collection of short stories entitled Your Eyes Are My Destiny . The following year she completed her studies with a bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of Damascus and then went to the American University of Beirut to obtain a Master of Arts in theater studies.

Al-Samman did not return to Damascus in the period that followed. Her other publications deal, among other things, with the Six Day War and the problems of Lebanon before and during the Lebanese civil war , which began in 1975,

In the late 1960s, al-Samman married a publisher. The couple has a son. She published most of her own works in her own publishing house. In the 1960s, the author was said to have had connections with some Palestinian writers and poets, such as the journalist Nasr Eddin Nashashibi and the poet Kamal Nasir . Her publication of a number of love letters written to her by the writer Ghassan Kanafani in the 1960s was condemned by some contemporaries, although this relationship had never been a secret.

Publications

• 1962: Your eyes are my destiny. Short stories.
• 1965: No sea in Beirut. Short stories.
• 1966: Strangers, Nights. Short stories.
• 1973: love. Poems.
• 1975: Beirut 75th novel. Dar Al-Adab, Beirut, Lebanon.
  • 1990: in German by Suleman Taufiq : By taxi to Beirut. Ed. Orient, Berlin, ISBN 3-922825-40-0 .
• 1976: I declare Love on you. Poems.
• 1977: Night ghosts in Beirut. Novel.
  • 1992: in German: Nightmare in Beirut. dtv, Munich, ISBN 3-423-11567-X .
• 1994: The Square Moon: Extra-Terrestrial Tales. Short stories.
• 1997: The Impossible Novel: Damascus Mosaic. Autobiography.
• 2003: A costume party for the dead.