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Harem
by Raffi
Translated from the Armenian by Beyon Miloyan and Kimberley McFarlane

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The Punishment
by Tahar Ben Jelloun
Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

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I Live in the Slums
by Can Xue
Translated from the Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

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The Book of Collateral Damage
by Sinan Antoon
Translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright

The Storms After

During a celebration of New Year's Eve at her friend's apartment, the narrator, who is a teacher, meets Sarah, who is a violinist, for the first time. Very soon, they keep in touch with each other, start to hang out, go to diners, cinemas and theatres, and it doesn't take long for Sarah to admit that she's in love with the narrator. Their intimate relation¹ begins to unfold, with burning passion for each other's presence, company and sensual engagement. They start spending time in each other's apartment, talk tirelessly and make love. When Sarah is out of Paris for her concert performances, the separation and longing for them become unbearable².

1.       She’s alive. She doesn’t realize that nothing matters to me now except the time I spend with her, that I’m feeling depressed, that I don’t like my work anymore, that I’ll get my doctor to give me a sicknote as soon as I can.

2.       It’s all about Sarah, her mysterious beauty, the sharp lines of her gentle bird-of-prey nose, her pebble-like eyes, green, but no, not green, her unusual colored eyes, her snake eyes with their drooping lids. It’s all about Sarah the impetuous, Sarah the passionate, Sarah the sulfurous, it’s all about the exact moment when the match flares, the exact moment when that piece of wood becomes fire, when the spark lights up the darkness, when burning springs out of nowhere. The exact moment is tiny, everything turned upside down in barely a second. It’s all about Sarah, symbol: S.

However, in the period of two years, the love, obsession and desire for each other become a kind of madness, such that they're exhausted by each other's company, and want to end³ the relationship, but miserably fail, something always dragging them together. The narrator becomes excessively sensitive to their relationship, as is evident in her obsession with the tiniest details about Sarah, even about things, thoughts and words that defines the relationship – which brings them joy and pleasure, but also exhaust them, and slowly becomes burden to their own personal freedom and private life. Latency, Sulfur, Passion, Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, The Four Seasons by Vivaldi, François Truffaut's Bed and Board, Hiroshima, My Love – these allegories or interludes that come in between seem abrupt, but on closer look it is a poetic representation of the core of the tension; silhouette of the overcasting cloud over their excesses, over their wavering^{4, 5} commitments.

3.       Sometimes she goes mad. Mad with fury then mad with misery. She screams, throws herself at me and scratches my face, with a monstrous expression on hers. She’s worse than a witch in a fairy tale. She resents me, for everything, for stealing her time, stealing her youth, stealing her family’s love, stealing the idea she’s had since childhood of how she should live her life. She doesn’t say it but I can hear it, it rings in my ears, thief, thief, thief. She gets angry with me for silly little things, all sorts of things, but deep down, I can tell, she’s angry with me for existing, for coming into her life, she’s angry with me for being a woman. She resents me because she can’t suddenly just love me in peace. She flies into blazing tempers, unforgettable tempers. Her little body is transformed. She looks like an animal, a furious animal, she roars, flushed red all over. And in the heat of the moment she forgets the Venetian love, the hidden kisses, the endless fondling.

4.       She wants us to go to the cinema, she wants us to make love, then she wants us to fall asleep in each other’s arms, she wants us to stop messaging and talking to each other for a few days, she wants us to eat Japanese, she wants us to go away to the country for a weekend to rest, she wants me to stop crying, she wants to go to a party without me, she wants to have no responsibilities, she wants to be footloose, she wants to be free.

5.       It’s all about Sarah, unpredictable, temperamental, disturbing, changeable and terrifying as a moth.

After knowing about Sarah's breast cancer, it becomes more of a torment for the narrator to be in her presence any more. She decides to run away from the city, and ends up in an old apartment in Trieste, Italy, only to be haunted by the episodes, words, images and memories of Sarah. Her days in Trieste, told in almost a dreamlike or in a stream of consciousness like fashion, reads as a chasm of an unfulfilling love affair brought upon an individual.

This psychological account of a lesbian love, delves deep into the joys and horror of a love affair, but departs from traditional romantic–tragic novels in many senses. The story has a poetic sensibility to it, a rhythm of an unfathomable passion, overturning the lives, and slowly dissolving into personal crisis – embarrassment and emotional torment of being in such a fervent love and desire for each other. They Say Sarah is a moving tale of two women, where passion turns nightmarish.

Author: Pauline Delabroy-Allard

Translator: Adriana Hunter

Publisher: Other Press

Author's Photo Source: https://images.randomhouse.com/author/2201244

Review Copy Courtesy: Other Press