Recently released.. “Secret of Saffron”.. a novel by Badria Al-Bishr of Saudi Arabia.

Books by Bilal Ramadan

Wednesday, 30 August 2023 at 06:00 AM

A recent novel by a Saudi author titled “Secret of Saffron”. patriotsHer novel “The Loves of Al-Asha Street” was previously longlisted in the Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction in its 2014 session.

Dr. Salwa al-Abbasi, in the introduction to the novel “Secret of Saffron”, in this novel, Badria al-Bishr cites its cultural and civilizational value by combining magical realism with the superstitious soul that captures the past. Heritage from the characteristics of the Saudi environment. Mixing reality and fantasy, she hammers the wedges of her imaginary world into the soft, shifting sands, never ceasing to “want to sever the hidden identity of reality and its presence, to discover the possible and the possible.”

Also Dr. Salwa al-Abbasi adds: “Riyadh”, echoes of the novel city of the desert, in which the rhythm of departure and moving mystery, is a quick step to stay in the spell of legend. . Narrative arts reveal women’s vandalism, wonder, and photography within arbitrary congregations. Imitating art for art’s sake and weaving fantasy like knots and intrigues and raids, denouncing the evils of crime, showing scorpions, avenging the dead and the innocent. A modern female fable in form and content, the stories tell of one being born from another’s womb and the events being recreated together through memory and imagination, with no difference. They are synonyms, but rather the two channels exchange maps of objects, the living, the dead, and a haunted space.

Salwa Al Abbasi says: In the congregations of Bedouin and urban women, they meet, fight, love each other, and cooperate in life’s hardships and life’s misfortunes.

And Salwa al-Abasi adds: Their speech is mixed with “the scent of civet, cloves, and saffron,” and the echoes of their sacrifices are “mixed with the smoke of raids, the beating of drums, and the cries of the dead.” So reader, who will you choose at this pace for a novel and a main character? Who is the intellectual interlocutor of “What is secret and hidden?” The nation of the illiterate saffron who knows the arts of medicine and herbalism? Or the woman “Nafla”, the flower of the high mountain, the young Bedouin girl, the daughter of the homeless village of “Al-Sabahiya”, identity, value And looking for meaning?

Salwa al-Abbasi says: The writer’s style is very interesting, nostalgic and calm, drawing you in with skill and flow to hide the patches of falsity, surprise and recording.

Badria al-Bishr is a Saudi writer and novelist, born in 1967 in Riyadh. He received his PhD in Philosophy of Art and Sociology from Lebanon University in 2005 and worked as an assistant professor at Al-University. Jazeera, Dubai, between 2010 and 2011.

Badria al-Bishr began writing a weekly column for the Saudi al-Yamama magazine in 1997. She became famous for her journalistic writings and became the first Arab woman to win the Best Column Award for 2011 at the Arab Journalism Awards. He has been a semi-daily columnist for Al-Hayat newspaper since 2009. He has written three novels: “Hind and the Military” in 2005, “The Swing” in 2010 and “Loves on Al-Asha Street” in 2013, in addition to three collections of short stories.