Kajin loves reading. She is never more at home than when she's around books. When the owner of the Mosul Bookstore sends her Letters from a Father to His Daughter, she becomes entranced by the modern ideas. She's so absorbed that she doesn't see the attack until it is too late.
Kajin, a Yazidi inhabitant of the small Mount Sinjar village of Astira, is hunted down by ISIS fighters. Gone are the small pleasures of reading. Instead, Kajin is expected to provide pleasure to her new captors. She can be sold, raped, or killed on a whim. She isn't the only one. Thousands of women and children have been captured by ISIS and condemned to the same horrific fate.
It is in this agony that Kajin meets her new captor, Sami Hamdan. Kajin studies her dark, tormented new captor closely. Is the enthusiastic ISIS recruit the key to her escape?
A powerful and surprising literary novel, Bitter Blackness was originally published in Arabic in 2014. It was the first Arabic-language novel to speak out against the evils of ISIS. Author Mohamed Sulieman Elfaki Al Shazly is proud to present this new English translation of one of his most poignant works.
About the Author: Mohamed Sulieman Elfaki Al Shazly is a prolific novelist and poet. The British/Sudanese author has won several awards for his works, including the Tayeb Salih International Prize for Creative Writing, the Sudan Ministry of Youth Story Prize, and two University of Khartoum Story Prizes. He has written several novels in both English and Arabic, including Bitter Blackness, Jewish Watches, A Murder in the English Countryside, Shadow of the South, My Home among the Dead, Together to Death, The Red Light District, Silent Nature, Churches & Mosques: The Tormented Sufi and Once upon a Time in Dubai. He has also been published in several newspapers and has written a play, a novella, and dozens of short stories.
