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Planet of Clay
Rima, a young girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. Rima finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people think she’s crazy, but she is no fool—the madness is in the battered city around her. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.
314 pages, Paperback
First published September 7, 2021
15 people are currently reading
1582 people want to read
About the author
Samar Yazbek
32 books237 followers- Syrian writer
- born in Jableh city, 1970
- published her first stories collection in 1999
- wrote many scripts for movies and TV series while working in the Syrian state TV, and she produced and presented the show of "Library Story" in 2008
- worked in Al-Hayat newspaper for 10 years, and published in many Syrian and Arab newspapers
- published four novels, and three books
- her A Woman in The Crossfire was translated into five languages
- co-founded in 2012 "Women NOW" development organization that is concerned with educational and economical empowerment of women and children
- born in Jableh city, 1970
- published her first stories collection in 1999
- wrote many scripts for movies and TV series while working in the Syrian state TV, and she produced and presented the show of "Library Story" in 2008
- worked in Al-Hayat newspaper for 10 years, and published in many Syrian and Arab newspapers
- published four novels, and three books
- her A Woman in The Crossfire was translated into five languages
- co-founded in 2012 "Women NOW" development organization that is concerned with educational and economical empowerment of women and children
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March 7, 2023
‘We wait, everyday, for the bombs to fall on us.’
In April 2013, Syrian Government forces laid siege to eastern Ghouta, which lasted 5 years and continued even after a UN ceasefire resolution in early February 2018. Exiled Syrian journalist Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay, brilliantly translated by Leri Price (for which it was shortlisted for the National Book Award in Translation), is brutal and poetic tale of the horrors of the Syrian Civil War told through the eyes of Rima, a young girl who spends much of the novel hiding from the bombings. Rima, who has chosen to never speak, has been deemed to suffering from mental illness yet through her writings we see that perhaps it is her mind that is the most rational tool in an irrational world. ‘I’m writing to you from my cellar, my secret new planet,’ she tells us, and through her love of literature she reconstructs what she understands of the death and dread around her into fantasy with frequent allusions to her favorite stories, The Little Prince and Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Yazbek looks horror directly in the eye through astonishingly poetic language and imagery, highlighting the brutality of war and the ways the most vulnerable suffer most in this passionately delivered story of survival and beauty in a world blown to pieces.
‘How could you escape dying if not by standing in front of it? Or at least looking straight at it?’
Samar Yazbek was forced into exile in Paris with her daughter in 2011 after being detained multiple times by Syria’s secret police under the Bashar al-Assad regime. However, she began clandestine returns into Syria to write about the descent into revolution and the early days of the uprisings, which she published in her 2012 book The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria, for which she was awarded a PEN/Pinter Prize for an “International writer of courage”. In an interview with DAWN, she says ‘I felt it was my duty as an intellectual and as a writer to write the truth of what had happened in Syria. The victims needed to have this voice.’ She also founded Women Now for Development, an NGO for empowering women in Syria. ‘Writing nonfiction actually was more like an exile from my true self,’ she says, ‘ I was exiled both from my land and from my true self—from my identity as a novelist.’ With Planet of Clay she says ‘when I started writing this novel, it was like getting back to my true land.’ And what a land of literature it is, with both terror and compassion pouring out of every page.
‘Don’t think that what you are reading is a novel,’ Rima writes at the start of the novel, ‘what I am writing is the truth and I am doing it to understand what happened.’ Non-verbal Rima sees the world much differently than others, and because her habit of uncontrollably walking away she has spent her whole life either tied to her mother’s wrist or tied in the school library in which her mother works, being cared for by Sitt Soud, a loving librarian. In fact, Rima sees the library as one of her ‘special planets’, a safe space inspired by the planets in The Little Prince, which really sold me on loving this novel. She has a love for words but says ‘it is difficult to form relationships between words and reality’. She prefers images, often drawing but has a gift for beautiful writing and believes ‘every adjective in language is a painting.’ Her mind is always racing, and often in many directions, which makes the narrative quite circuitous, crisscrossing the timeline and often getting ahead of herself. But writing, she believes, is like a magical spell or talisman that can save both herself, and you, the reader from the horrors of humanity.
She describes her way of unfolding the story like an elaborate ‘fairy ball’ of mirror fragments reflecting each other in pieces of reality all jumbled together. ‘It’s not necessary for an event to be inside a square frame,’ she explains, which feels an honest assessment in a world crumbling into chaos, and the novel progresses as ‘stories inside stories. Stories interweaving with stories.’ Admittedly, this can be frustrating at times and feel like going nowhere fast as the plot seems to slowly drip forward. Though this is fitting for a story told tied to a bar in a bombed out basement for days on end with no end in sight to the threatening thunder of bombs in the distance. The narration style also builds terrific tension to the point where, at times, you feel it may shred you from the inside out.
Rima also does not have a good grasp on the events occurring, told much like a child experiencing big events but more focused on the fantasies in her head and it takes some parsing out to understand what is going on. She doesn’t know the politics unfolding in Syria but is aware her brother has opinions that cause their mother to silence him and cry fearfully. Armed checkpoints seem commonplace and watching vicious arrests doesn’t strike her as odd. Mostly she just noticed how everyone’s ‘eyes had become strange.’ This style isn’t unlike how in university we studied Faulkner’s Barn Burning as an example of an unreliable narrator that simply doesn’t know how to processes the events before them, yet here it is almost a mercy as we remain safely in Rima’s secret planet of thought with the violence and fear mostly glimpsed in the peripheries.
That said, Rima is very underestimated. While she may seem unable to exist in society, she also has a very clear sense of self. This helps her to remain calm and collected under the traumatic conditions around her, and during the siege she becomes a beacon of hope with her drawings and demeanor. She remains positive even when things are at their bleakest, though often this is partially through not understanding what is happening. ‘How can people feel miserable when they possess such a gigantic quantity of meanings?’ she wonders, and for her the world is full of meaning, mystery and magic. Colors are especially important in her world—possibly hinting at synesthesia though her influence on ascribing meaning to color comes from Al-Tha’alibi’s writings on color—and through her eyes even the darkest of days have a whimsical quality to them. People, such as her brother’s friend in the resistance, Hassan, are written with mythical heroic attributes and demeanor. Moments of pure terror and violence are viewed a bit detached however, such as watching political prisoners beaten to death by guards while in the hospital. It takes a bit to get in the groove of this book, but it is worth it and functions both poetically and cerebrally as it asks you to process and survive along with her.
‘This planet won’t disappear until I disappear.’
It is a book where it seems that nothing much is happening and everything is happening simultaneously due to the elusive plot threads. Early in the book her mother is shot in a checkpoint tussle and she is taken in by her brother as the siege unfolds. She thinks about death but only thinks of others as ‘disappearing’, having no context of the bloodshed occurring all around. She focuses on her art and writing, going from one safehouse to being left in a cellar, her final secret planet, the planet of clay. Her story captures the key elements of the Seige of Eastern Ghouta. For context, A 2018 report from the Syrian Network for Human Rights said approximately 13,000 civilians were killed in the siege, including 1,463 children and 1,127 women. During the siege 80% of the approximately 9,700 children in Ghouta suffered from severe malnutrition and 70% of the population lived underground due to the mass bombings. Despite being banned, goverment forces used aerial chlorine gas attacks, shown as the ‘smelly bubbles’ in some of the most horrific scenes in the novel and the aftermath being just as terrible.
Planet of Clay is a chilling novel that looks hard at the brutality that can occur within humanity. It is also a reminder that the dangers increase exponentially for the most vulnerable, demonstrated in many ways but most pronounced as Rima’s survival depends on someone else always getting her to safety and providing for her. She is easily forgotten and if something happens to her caregivers she may be stranded forever. While this is a story to evoke compassion it is also one that weighs very heavily in your heart and mind. But we must not look away, as Yazbek is giving voice to the people who need to be heard most. Refugee crises and war play out on the nightly news in the comfort and safety of “away from there”, and Yazbek needs us to know they are just like us and how quickly we could become just like them. ‘Here people are dying,’ Rima writes, ‘and there they hear the sounds that people die from.’ This is a moving novel worth the work and one that will cling to me long after I have finished it.
4/5
‘Actually the world wasn’t at all colorful like Wonderland was. The cats vanished and didn’t reappear.’
In April 2013, Syrian Government forces laid siege to eastern Ghouta, which lasted 5 years and continued even after a UN ceasefire resolution in early February 2018. Exiled Syrian journalist Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay, brilliantly translated by Leri Price (for which it was shortlisted for the National Book Award in Translation), is brutal and poetic tale of the horrors of the Syrian Civil War told through the eyes of Rima, a young girl who spends much of the novel hiding from the bombings. Rima, who has chosen to never speak, has been deemed to suffering from mental illness yet through her writings we see that perhaps it is her mind that is the most rational tool in an irrational world. ‘I’m writing to you from my cellar, my secret new planet,’ she tells us, and through her love of literature she reconstructs what she understands of the death and dread around her into fantasy with frequent allusions to her favorite stories, The Little Prince and Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Yazbek looks horror directly in the eye through astonishingly poetic language and imagery, highlighting the brutality of war and the ways the most vulnerable suffer most in this passionately delivered story of survival and beauty in a world blown to pieces.
‘How could you escape dying if not by standing in front of it? Or at least looking straight at it?’
Samar Yazbek was forced into exile in Paris with her daughter in 2011 after being detained multiple times by Syria’s secret police under the Bashar al-Assad regime. However, she began clandestine returns into Syria to write about the descent into revolution and the early days of the uprisings, which she published in her 2012 book The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria, for which she was awarded a PEN/Pinter Prize for an “International writer of courage”. In an interview with DAWN, she says ‘I felt it was my duty as an intellectual and as a writer to write the truth of what had happened in Syria. The victims needed to have this voice.’ She also founded Women Now for Development, an NGO for empowering women in Syria. ‘Writing nonfiction actually was more like an exile from my true self,’ she says, ‘ I was exiled both from my land and from my true self—from my identity as a novelist.’ With Planet of Clay she says ‘when I started writing this novel, it was like getting back to my true land.’ And what a land of literature it is, with both terror and compassion pouring out of every page.
‘Don’t think that what you are reading is a novel,’ Rima writes at the start of the novel, ‘what I am writing is the truth and I am doing it to understand what happened.’ Non-verbal Rima sees the world much differently than others, and because her habit of uncontrollably walking away she has spent her whole life either tied to her mother’s wrist or tied in the school library in which her mother works, being cared for by Sitt Soud, a loving librarian. In fact, Rima sees the library as one of her ‘special planets’, a safe space inspired by the planets in The Little Prince, which really sold me on loving this novel. She has a love for words but says ‘it is difficult to form relationships between words and reality’. She prefers images, often drawing but has a gift for beautiful writing and believes ‘every adjective in language is a painting.’ Her mind is always racing, and often in many directions, which makes the narrative quite circuitous, crisscrossing the timeline and often getting ahead of herself. But writing, she believes, is like a magical spell or talisman that can save both herself, and you, the reader from the horrors of humanity.
’I pick up the blue pen which I found among the stacks of paper, and I begin. You must not set off before the sound has started. Don't stop unless you are faint from exhaustion, but it must be from exhaustion and not fear. If all this isn't done properly, I mean using the blue pen to play with words on a blank page, then my instructions will fail, the blank page won't like you, and the roar of the aeroplanes won't disappear.’
She describes her way of unfolding the story like an elaborate ‘fairy ball’ of mirror fragments reflecting each other in pieces of reality all jumbled together. ‘It’s not necessary for an event to be inside a square frame,’ she explains, which feels an honest assessment in a world crumbling into chaos, and the novel progresses as ‘stories inside stories. Stories interweaving with stories.’ Admittedly, this can be frustrating at times and feel like going nowhere fast as the plot seems to slowly drip forward. Though this is fitting for a story told tied to a bar in a bombed out basement for days on end with no end in sight to the threatening thunder of bombs in the distance. The narration style also builds terrific tension to the point where, at times, you feel it may shred you from the inside out.
Rima also does not have a good grasp on the events occurring, told much like a child experiencing big events but more focused on the fantasies in her head and it takes some parsing out to understand what is going on. She doesn’t know the politics unfolding in Syria but is aware her brother has opinions that cause their mother to silence him and cry fearfully. Armed checkpoints seem commonplace and watching vicious arrests doesn’t strike her as odd. Mostly she just noticed how everyone’s ‘eyes had become strange.’ This style isn’t unlike how in university we studied Faulkner’s Barn Burning as an example of an unreliable narrator that simply doesn’t know how to processes the events before them, yet here it is almost a mercy as we remain safely in Rima’s secret planet of thought with the violence and fear mostly glimpsed in the peripheries.
That said, Rima is very underestimated. While she may seem unable to exist in society, she also has a very clear sense of self. This helps her to remain calm and collected under the traumatic conditions around her, and during the siege she becomes a beacon of hope with her drawings and demeanor. She remains positive even when things are at their bleakest, though often this is partially through not understanding what is happening. ‘How can people feel miserable when they possess such a gigantic quantity of meanings?’ she wonders, and for her the world is full of meaning, mystery and magic. Colors are especially important in her world—possibly hinting at synesthesia though her influence on ascribing meaning to color comes from Al-Tha’alibi’s writings on color—and through her eyes even the darkest of days have a whimsical quality to them. People, such as her brother’s friend in the resistance, Hassan, are written with mythical heroic attributes and demeanor. Moments of pure terror and violence are viewed a bit detached however, such as watching political prisoners beaten to death by guards while in the hospital. It takes a bit to get in the groove of this book, but it is worth it and functions both poetically and cerebrally as it asks you to process and survive along with her.
‘This planet won’t disappear until I disappear.’
It is a book where it seems that nothing much is happening and everything is happening simultaneously due to the elusive plot threads. Early in the book her mother is shot in a checkpoint tussle and she is taken in by her brother as the siege unfolds. She thinks about death but only thinks of others as ‘disappearing’, having no context of the bloodshed occurring all around. She focuses on her art and writing, going from one safehouse to being left in a cellar, her final secret planet, the planet of clay. Her story captures the key elements of the Seige of Eastern Ghouta. For context, A 2018 report from the Syrian Network for Human Rights said approximately 13,000 civilians were killed in the siege, including 1,463 children and 1,127 women. During the siege 80% of the approximately 9,700 children in Ghouta suffered from severe malnutrition and 70% of the population lived underground due to the mass bombings. Despite being banned, goverment forces used aerial chlorine gas attacks, shown as the ‘smelly bubbles’ in some of the most horrific scenes in the novel and the aftermath being just as terrible.
‘The planes dropped bombs on us that had poison gas inside, and these gases can penetrate clothing, and if someone is affected you have to take off their clothes so they won’t die. The women who had been treated had stayed in their clothes because the men said it was sinful for women to be uncovered in front of men, and Hassan was furious.’
Planet of Clay is a chilling novel that looks hard at the brutality that can occur within humanity. It is also a reminder that the dangers increase exponentially for the most vulnerable, demonstrated in many ways but most pronounced as Rima’s survival depends on someone else always getting her to safety and providing for her. She is easily forgotten and if something happens to her caregivers she may be stranded forever. While this is a story to evoke compassion it is also one that weighs very heavily in your heart and mind. But we must not look away, as Yazbek is giving voice to the people who need to be heard most. Refugee crises and war play out on the nightly news in the comfort and safety of “away from there”, and Yazbek needs us to know they are just like us and how quickly we could become just like them. ‘Here people are dying,’ Rima writes, ‘and there they hear the sounds that people die from.’ This is a moving novel worth the work and one that will cling to me long after I have finished it.
4/5
‘Actually the world wasn’t at all colorful like Wonderland was. The cats vanished and didn’t reappear.’
October 31, 2021
A young woman flees Damascus to hide in a cellar after militants separate her from her family and while aerial bombardments destroy her country. This is a weighty premise that deserves a powerful novel. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. Because of the narrator’s trauma, her cognitive development seems to have been stunted at the level of a small child. As a result, the story is disjointed and lacking impact. The elliptical narrative was by design, and there may be more to the structure than initially meets the eye, but I didn’t find it to be effective or emotionally engaging. This one fell quite short of my expectations.
October 30, 2021
When I get older and my monthly cycles started, my mother decided I should stay at home to protect my honor,. I put a covering on my head, a colorful hijab. I would fix it in the shape of a rose, which made me laugh and feel happy. My mother began to tie me to the bed in our room with a long rope when she was at work. The summer months we spent together.
Extraordinary, terrifying, glorious, literary, upsetting. Read it. Yazbek (whose words reach me through the magic help of her translator, Leri Price) creates such a captivating voice to tell this story--the voice of a naive innocent--and through that voice somehow captures the terror and disorder of life in contemporary Syria in time of war.
I'm extremely moved by what I read and I'm in awe of both Yazbek and Price, for allowing me as a reader of English to enter this beautiful/horrifying world. This novel is easily a candidate for my "best book of 2021" ... a short list for me, but one that also includes two other books from the NBA finalists for best translated book of 2021. This novel reminds me again of how grateful I am to the publishers who are bringing these great works of contemporary world literature to the English-speaking world.
If I search my reading past for a book that this novel reminds me of I would say A GENERAL THEORY OF OBLIVION by Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa, which is told from the point of view of an agoraphobic woman who walls herself in her apartment even as Angola erupts in civil violence outside her doors. There is something about using the perspective of an innocent that allows both authors to explore terrible truths.
Extraordinary, terrifying, glorious, literary, upsetting. Read it. Yazbek (whose words reach me through the magic help of her translator, Leri Price) creates such a captivating voice to tell this story--the voice of a naive innocent--and through that voice somehow captures the terror and disorder of life in contemporary Syria in time of war.
I'm extremely moved by what I read and I'm in awe of both Yazbek and Price, for allowing me as a reader of English to enter this beautiful/horrifying world. This novel is easily a candidate for my "best book of 2021" ... a short list for me, but one that also includes two other books from the NBA finalists for best translated book of 2021. This novel reminds me again of how grateful I am to the publishers who are bringing these great works of contemporary world literature to the English-speaking world.
If I search my reading past for a book that this novel reminds me of I would say A GENERAL THEORY OF OBLIVION by Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa, which is told from the point of view of an agoraphobic woman who walls herself in her apartment even as Angola erupts in civil violence outside her doors. There is something about using the perspective of an innocent that allows both authors to explore terrible truths.
November 17, 2021
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: First, read this:
The rational response to an irrational world, one filled with mortal danger, will always be different for a small child. When a small child is required to make the world make sense when it simply doesn't, such as in a war zone, there will arise adaptive responses that are in the long run maladaptive. And add in the probability of the person being neurodivergent from the get-go...well, what are the odds of that person reaching adulthood? Still less unscathed.
Rima's mother knows her daughter isn't the usual sort of child. She's got "her brains in her feet," meaning a mania for walking, walking, always walking if she can stay on her feet...in other words, a need to escape...and on one of her very first outings, so to speak, a group of well-meaning adults stop her and ask her all sorts of urgent questions...what's your name, where's your mother...that she simply can't process fast enough to answer. Thus is an elective mute created.
So now Rima's mother is living in a war zone with a manic, elective mute daughter. She does what any mother would do...she makes the medical rounds, seeking answers. Getting none, she does the thing mothers have done since the beginning of time: She improvises. She gets some rope and ties Rima to her wrist when she has to go out and, when the girl's too much of a woman for that to be safe, she ties her to their bed.
That sounds horrific to a Western person who's safe inside a house every night, with only police drones and cop cars to worry about. But think of this: How safe is a young woman on the streets here in your fat-and-happy country? You'll always teach her to be aware of the threat posed by Them. (You'll be filling in that space with the people you dislike the most, of course, but I assure you she's safer from Them than from the nice, entitled, self-satisfied boys in her school.) For someone with fewer resources than the poorest person in this country of ours, the solution fits the need admirably.
What it doesn't, can't do is prepare Rima for one of the personal calamities that even the mildest "police action" or "guerrilla war" engenders: The loss of a parent. In this case, an only parent...her father's never even been a presence for his absence to be felt. What this means is her world is effectively over. And yet her life goes on, in her mother's permanent absence and her brother's disappearance into the guerrillas' ranks.
What makes this such a perfect read for this moment is the Belarus-vs-Poland manufactured refugee crisis permeating the news cycle right now. It's a necessary and salutary reminder that the world's not in good shape, plague aside; the people, living breathing people, who are caught between two sets of disgusting racist piece-of-shit countries and who will continue to die of exposure as the world idly watches it happen, aren't going to get what they need any more than Rima did.
Mirabile dictu, Rima's brother shows up! He finds her! And they begin the refugee's eternal dance, the homeless and placeless and stateless state of being, of non-personhood. Of course to Rima it's not that way...she simply does. She lives. She is in touch with something utterly invaluable for a refugee: Her self. It is clear to her who she is, she is Rima and she reads, she sings the Qu'ran's sutras, she draws. It is a saving grace. What it isn't is easy for a storyteller to sell. She is simultaneously simple and sophisticated, ignorant and wise and way over her head.
Let me show you:
That is some very sophisticated abstract thought for someone with the neurodivergence Rima has displayed...in the circumstances of her upbringing, I'd be impressed with that level of eloquent abstraction in a neurotypical young adult.
All in all, though, as a work of fiction, I was compelled by the story, by the character, by the narrative's timeliness and timelessness. I'm very impressed as this is the first work I've read by Author Yazbek. It is, as she has Rima say of her own storytelling, one of those "circular stories with intersecting centers which are only completed by retellings and new details."
The problem is reassembling my heart after the story ends....
This is a very special, very timely yet a timeless read...there is no realistic chance the subject matter will lose its relevance. It is a FINALIST for the 2021 Best Translated Literature category at the National Book Awards! The winner will be announced this evening.
My Review: First, read this:
We needed to take two buses to reach {my mother's job} from our house, which was at the end of Jaramana Camp in southern Damascus. I am happy for you if you haven't heard of it.
–and–
Personally, I turn over the coffee tray and make it into a desk, then I pick up the blue pen which I found among the stacks of paper, and I begin. You must not set off before the sound has started. Don't stop unless you are faint from exhaustion, but it must be from exhaustion and not fear. If all this isn't done properly, I mean using the blue pen to play with words on a blank page, then my instructions will fail, the blank page won't like you, and the roar of the aeroplanes won't disappear.
The rational response to an irrational world, one filled with mortal danger, will always be different for a small child. When a small child is required to make the world make sense when it simply doesn't, such as in a war zone, there will arise adaptive responses that are in the long run maladaptive. And add in the probability of the person being neurodivergent from the get-go...well, what are the odds of that person reaching adulthood? Still less unscathed.
Rima's mother knows her daughter isn't the usual sort of child. She's got "her brains in her feet," meaning a mania for walking, walking, always walking if she can stay on her feet...in other words, a need to escape...and on one of her very first outings, so to speak, a group of well-meaning adults stop her and ask her all sorts of urgent questions...what's your name, where's your mother...that she simply can't process fast enough to answer. Thus is an elective mute created.
So now Rima's mother is living in a war zone with a manic, elective mute daughter. She does what any mother would do...she makes the medical rounds, seeking answers. Getting none, she does the thing mothers have done since the beginning of time: She improvises. She gets some rope and ties Rima to her wrist when she has to go out and, when the girl's too much of a woman for that to be safe, she ties her to their bed.
That sounds horrific to a Western person who's safe inside a house every night, with only police drones and cop cars to worry about. But think of this: How safe is a young woman on the streets here in your fat-and-happy country? You'll always teach her to be aware of the threat posed by Them. (You'll be filling in that space with the people you dislike the most, of course, but I assure you she's safer from Them than from the nice, entitled, self-satisfied boys in her school.) For someone with fewer resources than the poorest person in this country of ours, the solution fits the need admirably.
What it doesn't, can't do is prepare Rima for one of the personal calamities that even the mildest "police action" or "guerrilla war" engenders: The loss of a parent. In this case, an only parent...her father's never even been a presence for his absence to be felt. What this means is her world is effectively over. And yet her life goes on, in her mother's permanent absence and her brother's disappearance into the guerrillas' ranks.
What makes this such a perfect read for this moment is the Belarus-vs-Poland manufactured refugee crisis permeating the news cycle right now. It's a necessary and salutary reminder that the world's not in good shape, plague aside; the people, living breathing people, who are caught between two sets of disgusting racist piece-of-shit countries and who will continue to die of exposure as the world idly watches it happen, aren't going to get what they need any more than Rima did.
Mirabile dictu, Rima's brother shows up! He finds her! And they begin the refugee's eternal dance, the homeless and placeless and stateless state of being, of non-personhood. Of course to Rima it's not that way...she simply does. She lives. She is in touch with something utterly invaluable for a refugee: Her self. It is clear to her who she is, she is Rima and she reads, she sings the Qu'ran's sutras, she draws. It is a saving grace. What it isn't is easy for a storyteller to sell. She is simultaneously simple and sophisticated, ignorant and wise and way over her head.
Let me show you:
You will understand that I don't have enough time to explain to you about forgetting. Later, you can throw away whatever pages you want to. What matters to me is {the old caretaking woman} who wanted to understand how I knew how to use tartil in reciting the Qu'ran. Really, it was difficult to explain to her, because my tongue was stopped, and like {her} I don't understand much of what surrounds me.
–and–
I am a story, I too will disappear (or maybe I am with you now as you read my scattered words) like the Cheshire Cat did in the story of Alice.
That is some very sophisticated abstract thought for someone with the neurodivergence Rima has displayed...in the circumstances of her upbringing, I'd be impressed with that level of eloquent abstraction in a neurotypical young adult.
All in all, though, as a work of fiction, I was compelled by the story, by the character, by the narrative's timeliness and timelessness. I'm very impressed as this is the first work I've read by Author Yazbek. It is, as she has Rima say of her own storytelling, one of those "circular stories with intersecting centers which are only completed by retellings and new details."
The problem is reassembling my heart after the story ends....
This is a very special, very timely yet a timeless read...there is no realistic chance the subject matter will lose its relevance. It is a FINALIST for the 2021 Best Translated Literature category at the National Book Awards! The winner will be announced this evening.
August 22, 2021
Planet of Clay, by Samar Yazbek, is one of those books that can break your heart, which makes it all the more worth reading. Set in contemporary Syria, Planet of Clay offers the tale of one young woman's experience of the civil war in that nation. Rima is an unusual narrator—she doesn't speak (by choice), but she sings the Qur'an to calm herself and others; she loves to draw and tell stories of her own devising and from books she's read; she is a restless and endless thinker whose mind takes her to places readers might not expect.
Rima is a compulsive walker. She is *compelled* to walk. As she explains to readers, her brain is in her feet. As a result, she's spent most of her young life tied by a length of rope to her mother's hand or to a solid object of some sort, so she can't roam too far. In the Damascus neighborhood where she lives, she can hear bombings, but they're distant. Then one day on a cross-city trip, her world is torn apart: her mother is shot and killed at one of the city's many check points; Rima is injured and stranded in a hospital that appears to function as a typical hospital, but is also a place where political prisoners are sent to heal between rounds of interrogation. Somehow, Rima's brother, who has become one of the fighters in the uprising again the nation's "President," finds her, and they set off to a rebel community some distance from Damascus. Now Rima doesn't just hear the bombings. She experiences and sees what they can do to frail human bodies.
Rima makes an exceptional narrator. She relates the horrors she's observing without self pity and escapes on flights of fancy, drawing and writing—sometimes in real life, sometimes in her imagination. There are times when her linguistic sophistication seems to fluctuate, and I'm not sure whether that was a deliberate choice by Yazbek. The book has moments when a reader wonders "how can she know about and describe x, when she doesn't know about and can't describe y?" But that's the Rima Yazbek gives us, and given the many facets to Rima's identity, a reader can embrace these discrepancies as part of the unusual person Rima is.
By letting Rima tell her own story, Yazbek takes readers into the Syrian civil war in ways news reportage can't. What we see is one small slice of that conflict, but we see that slice in detail under Rima's tutelage.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
Rima is a compulsive walker. She is *compelled* to walk. As she explains to readers, her brain is in her feet. As a result, she's spent most of her young life tied by a length of rope to her mother's hand or to a solid object of some sort, so she can't roam too far. In the Damascus neighborhood where she lives, she can hear bombings, but they're distant. Then one day on a cross-city trip, her world is torn apart: her mother is shot and killed at one of the city's many check points; Rima is injured and stranded in a hospital that appears to function as a typical hospital, but is also a place where political prisoners are sent to heal between rounds of interrogation. Somehow, Rima's brother, who has become one of the fighters in the uprising again the nation's "President," finds her, and they set off to a rebel community some distance from Damascus. Now Rima doesn't just hear the bombings. She experiences and sees what they can do to frail human bodies.
Rima makes an exceptional narrator. She relates the horrors she's observing without self pity and escapes on flights of fancy, drawing and writing—sometimes in real life, sometimes in her imagination. There are times when her linguistic sophistication seems to fluctuate, and I'm not sure whether that was a deliberate choice by Yazbek. The book has moments when a reader wonders "how can she know about and describe x, when she doesn't know about and can't describe y?" But that's the Rima Yazbek gives us, and given the many facets to Rima's identity, a reader can embrace these discrepancies as part of the unusual person Rima is.
By letting Rima tell her own story, Yazbek takes readers into the Syrian civil war in ways news reportage can't. What we see is one small slice of that conflict, but we see that slice in detail under Rima's tutelage.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
October 16, 2021
A young man a little older than me would bring the vegetables to our house. The check-points had increased after our visit that summer, so the grocer had asked my mother to stay at home—he would bring the vegeta-bles to her and pick them up after we had prepared them. This is when I met that boy. He was the one who brought the vegetables and took them away again. I was forbidden to talk to strangers. My mother would tell them that I was crazy! This is another story I will tell you, I mean the story of the young man whose name I didn't know, but not now. I meant to tell you the story of the checkpoint, but then I remembered the first time and the last time I saw a checkpoint, and then I sud-denly remembered the vivid colours of the vegetables I used to play with by making shapes out of their peels, and so I got dis-tracted from the original story.
This has been shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and has an average rating here of over 4.5 with glowing reviews from readers whose opinions I respect.
So I am happy to acknowledge that the issue here is with me, and my reading tastes, rather than the book.
I can understand the author's desire to (per the foreword) "remain in the realm of wonder to outstrip the violence of the story", and she creates a memorable narrator, albeit one that leans a little too heavily on The Little Prince.
But unfortunately I found the resulting voice rather cloying and the deliberately digressive story tedious, so that I ended up skim reading the last 200 pages.
This has been shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and has an average rating here of over 4.5 with glowing reviews from readers whose opinions I respect.
So I am happy to acknowledge that the issue here is with me, and my reading tastes, rather than the book.
I can understand the author's desire to (per the foreword) "remain in the realm of wonder to outstrip the violence of the story", and she creates a memorable narrator, albeit one that leans a little too heavily on The Little Prince.
But unfortunately I found the resulting voice rather cloying and the deliberately digressive story tedious, so that I ended up skim reading the last 200 pages.
April 14, 2021
This is a most original tales of the war launched by the Syrians on their own citizens. The narrator is a young teenage girl with some type of mental issues which has caused her mother to tie her to her room to stop her from wandering. She is mainly mute but can recite the Koran. But while she has limited knowledge of the world she has a vivid imagination, an appreciation of literature and a love of drawing to tell her stories.
Around her people are murdered and killed by bombing. She is injured and later suffers from a chemical bomb attack. She spirals from hope to hopelessness. It is a bleak honest tale written full of visual signposts. Sadly this will be for me a memorable book.
Around her people are murdered and killed by bombing. She is injured and later suffers from a chemical bomb attack. She spirals from hope to hopelessness. It is a bleak honest tale written full of visual signposts. Sadly this will be for me a memorable book.
September 25, 2025
My worst reading in 2025! I was impatiently waiting for the novel to finish and I kept counting the pages left, although I never do that. The book narrates the story of a mute girl in Syria during the war who loses everyone and everything in the most boring and repetitive details ever. I know the novel was acclaimed and even won a big accolade, but that's only for documenting a crucial moment in contemporary times, but definitely not for its literary merits, because it doesn't have any. One of those books that I regret the time I wasted on :(
January 15, 2022
Heartbreaking from beginning to end. This is Rima's story. She is a young girl, probably around 12 to 14 years old at the time of the story's telling, who has grown up on the edges of Damascus, Syria as the country is torn by revolution and war. She lives with her mother and her older brother Saad, and her family is poor although Rima is not really aware of that.
Rima has never been quite like other children. Because she has a tendency to roam off -- "I was born, and I can't stop walking. I stand up and I set off and I keep walking and walking. I see the road, and it has no end. My feet take over and I walk -- I just follow them. I don't understand why it happened, and I'm not expecting you to understand either. This enchantment of mine doesn't care what people might understand." -- her family always keeps her tethered to one of them or to the room she is in if she must be left alone. She hasn't talked since she was about 4 years old, although she sometimes chants the Quran she has memorized and there is nothing physiologically wrong that prevents her from speaking. But don't get the idea that there is anything wrong with Rima's brain. She has been reading from an early age, committing to memory many stories, which she expands upon in her own drawings and writings. She sees and processes all of the world in vivid colors and images, full of fantastical imagining, and she can teach others to draw and comprehend the world through stories.
This is Rima's story. One day, she and her mother get on a bus to go to the home of their friend Sitt Souad, the librarian who introduced Rima to the world of books at the school where Rima's mother was a housekeeper. They never make it there.
Translated from Arabic, in this novel Ms. Yazbek shows us what it is like to simply try to live when your home and country are under siege, where there is no knowing when and how that siege might ever end. Lest we forget that today, in 2022, people in countries all over the world are just wanting to live, yet having to make that attempt in the conditions this novel so poignantly paints.
Rima has never been quite like other children. Because she has a tendency to roam off -- "I was born, and I can't stop walking. I stand up and I set off and I keep walking and walking. I see the road, and it has no end. My feet take over and I walk -- I just follow them. I don't understand why it happened, and I'm not expecting you to understand either. This enchantment of mine doesn't care what people might understand." -- her family always keeps her tethered to one of them or to the room she is in if she must be left alone. She hasn't talked since she was about 4 years old, although she sometimes chants the Quran she has memorized and there is nothing physiologically wrong that prevents her from speaking. But don't get the idea that there is anything wrong with Rima's brain. She has been reading from an early age, committing to memory many stories, which she expands upon in her own drawings and writings. She sees and processes all of the world in vivid colors and images, full of fantastical imagining, and she can teach others to draw and comprehend the world through stories.
This is Rima's story. One day, she and her mother get on a bus to go to the home of their friend Sitt Souad, the librarian who introduced Rima to the world of books at the school where Rima's mother was a housekeeper. They never make it there.
Translated from Arabic, in this novel Ms. Yazbek shows us what it is like to simply try to live when your home and country are under siege, where there is no knowing when and how that siege might ever end. Lest we forget that today, in 2022, people in countries all over the world are just wanting to live, yet having to make that attempt in the conditions this novel so poignantly paints.
August 26, 2021
I don’t think Planet of Clay is a book I would have picked up had it not been for Ruth Killick and World Editions kindly sending me an advance review copy. How glad I am that they did because reading this book was to enter a strange, unsettling world and meet an unforgettable character.
Translated from Arabic by Leri Price, Planet of Clay‘s narrator, Rima, recounts her story in a non-linear fashion, switching back and forth in time between different memories of events she has witnessed. The stories seem to pour out of her, with many left unfinished as she takes up another story, along with frequent promises that she will return at some point to complete the earlier stories. As she admits, ‘I’m writing without restraint and without sequence’. This takes some getting used to but I found it best to go with the flow and see where Rima took me.
Through Rima’s eyes the reader experiences the horror of daily life in war-torn Damascus: checkpoints, armed militia and tanks on the street, aeroplanes flying overhead and the sound of bombs falling across the city. ‘We wait, every day, for the bombs to fall on us.’ At one point, she muses, ‘I don’t understand how a giant plane can come and kill small, weak people in such quantities.’ Quite. Rima witnesses random acts of violence, one of which results in the death of her mother, just one of the people who disappears from Rima’s life. Worse is to come as parts of the city are subjected to attack from lethal weapons. In the words of Rima, ‘the planes and the sky rained smells in August‘. Rima herself suffers the after-effects of this attack.
Rima’s view of the world is different from those around her, sensed as colours rather than words, and expressed through drawings. For her, ‘every adjective in language is like a painting‘. The writing has moments of intense beauty with some memorable turns of phrase, often influenced by Rima’s beloved The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. ‘Love is a group of small planets with long thin arms dancing then lacing together into a knot of dazzling light.’
Before long, Rima’s existence has contracted to a tiny cellar room which she cannot leave. She perceives her life as a series of planets, and retreats in her mind to the most secret of them, one which is ‘hard to invade’ and cannot disappear until she disappears too. And as for the book’s title? As Rima observes, ‘We are toys made out of clay, small toys, quick to break and crumble’.
Towards the end of the book Rima observes, ‘You are starting to know my theory now, about circular stories with intersecting centres which are only completed by retelling and new details’. The stories Rima tells are heartbreaking and paint a unique picture of a world gone mad. I’m sure I won’t be the only reader to see parallels with the terrible events taking place in Afghanistan.
Translated from Arabic by Leri Price, Planet of Clay‘s narrator, Rima, recounts her story in a non-linear fashion, switching back and forth in time between different memories of events she has witnessed. The stories seem to pour out of her, with many left unfinished as she takes up another story, along with frequent promises that she will return at some point to complete the earlier stories. As she admits, ‘I’m writing without restraint and without sequence’. This takes some getting used to but I found it best to go with the flow and see where Rima took me.
Through Rima’s eyes the reader experiences the horror of daily life in war-torn Damascus: checkpoints, armed militia and tanks on the street, aeroplanes flying overhead and the sound of bombs falling across the city. ‘We wait, every day, for the bombs to fall on us.’ At one point, she muses, ‘I don’t understand how a giant plane can come and kill small, weak people in such quantities.’ Quite. Rima witnesses random acts of violence, one of which results in the death of her mother, just one of the people who disappears from Rima’s life. Worse is to come as parts of the city are subjected to attack from lethal weapons. In the words of Rima, ‘the planes and the sky rained smells in August‘. Rima herself suffers the after-effects of this attack.
Rima’s view of the world is different from those around her, sensed as colours rather than words, and expressed through drawings. For her, ‘every adjective in language is like a painting‘. The writing has moments of intense beauty with some memorable turns of phrase, often influenced by Rima’s beloved The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. ‘Love is a group of small planets with long thin arms dancing then lacing together into a knot of dazzling light.’
Before long, Rima’s existence has contracted to a tiny cellar room which she cannot leave. She perceives her life as a series of planets, and retreats in her mind to the most secret of them, one which is ‘hard to invade’ and cannot disappear until she disappears too. And as for the book’s title? As Rima observes, ‘We are toys made out of clay, small toys, quick to break and crumble’.
Towards the end of the book Rima observes, ‘You are starting to know my theory now, about circular stories with intersecting centres which are only completed by retelling and new details’. The stories Rima tells are heartbreaking and paint a unique picture of a world gone mad. I’m sure I won’t be the only reader to see parallels with the terrible events taking place in Afghanistan.
August 20, 2021
“We are toys made out of clay, small toys, quick to break and crumble, and in fact a simple scratch is enough to turn our bodies into dust. And our limbs are snapped so easily. You don’t think so? You could have seen that for yourself”
This a difficult read, a dark account of the Syrian conflict told by the most endearing voice of a young girl who lives it on her skin. Rima does not speak, but only sings the Quran because she has a “voice that would make the stones weep”. She has rage and fire in her feet and when she starts walking she cannot stop. To protect her, her mom tells everyone she is crazy, and we often see her tied to someone’s wrist or in a room to make sure she does not run away. Rima’s story begins as her mom is shot at checkpoint trying to run after her and will provide a vivid account filtered by the innocent gaze of a child who witnesses unspeakable horrors
Rima loves colouring and makes sense of the world by drawing what she sees. It is an act of telling stories to survive, a bit like in the 1001 Nights. She also warns us that she is not writing a novel with a neat structure, a beginning and an ending, but the truth, to try and understand what happened. For this reason, Planet of Clay reads like a piece of documentary fiction that accurately captures the madness and messiness of war.
Rima is truly a compelling, unforgettable character: the author beautifully captures the voice of a child who addresses us directly, drawing us into her world and trying to explain it to us, through tales, colours, images and using The Little Prince as her personal guide for hope and endurance. Children do not need to embellish, soften or mystify reality as adults do and are not afraid of asking questions we find embarrassing; they relate events exactly as they see them but filtered by their beautiful imagination and their own child language. This is true for Rima, too, as through her candid voice the stark realities she witnesses appear in all their monstrosity. A brave, important book.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This a difficult read, a dark account of the Syrian conflict told by the most endearing voice of a young girl who lives it on her skin. Rima does not speak, but only sings the Quran because she has a “voice that would make the stones weep”. She has rage and fire in her feet and when she starts walking she cannot stop. To protect her, her mom tells everyone she is crazy, and we often see her tied to someone’s wrist or in a room to make sure she does not run away. Rima’s story begins as her mom is shot at checkpoint trying to run after her and will provide a vivid account filtered by the innocent gaze of a child who witnesses unspeakable horrors
Rima loves colouring and makes sense of the world by drawing what she sees. It is an act of telling stories to survive, a bit like in the 1001 Nights. She also warns us that she is not writing a novel with a neat structure, a beginning and an ending, but the truth, to try and understand what happened. For this reason, Planet of Clay reads like a piece of documentary fiction that accurately captures the madness and messiness of war.
Rima is truly a compelling, unforgettable character: the author beautifully captures the voice of a child who addresses us directly, drawing us into her world and trying to explain it to us, through tales, colours, images and using The Little Prince as her personal guide for hope and endurance. Children do not need to embellish, soften or mystify reality as adults do and are not afraid of asking questions we find embarrassing; they relate events exactly as they see them but filtered by their beautiful imagination and their own child language. This is true for Rima, too, as through her candid voice the stark realities she witnesses appear in all their monstrosity. A brave, important book.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
December 23, 2021
"I don't know how I will finish this story because it all happened so quickly. It seems that while I am telling you these little stories, I am spinning round in intertwining circles, and every circle I go into has a new circle inside, and causes me to lose track of the previous one. All the things and events and everything that is happening and has happened in my life happens quickly."
Yazbek refers to Rima as a "woman-child who tells of the war through her initial shock, [the usual reaction] in the face of such violence." As so she has chosen to "remain in the realm of wonder to outstrip the violence of the story." Rima thinks and acts like a child, perhaps due to sustained trauma, her vaguely described physical features indicate something else. She narrates self-consciously, breaking the fourth wall, picking and dropping threads, "circular stories with intersecting centers which are only completed by retellings and new details." It's the only way maybe to articulate what is happening to her and around her.
She is actually preparing a written account with her own unique alphabets, supplemented with drawbacks, but what any reader gets are only words on a page. Much like her secret planets, sprouting from her Little Prince obsession and a coping mechanism, it all must be imagined. Yazbek's exploration of her interiority is both spellbinding and tragic—the former for its rich detail and vivid vision of the world, the latter for its depiction of quotidian horrors whilst living under a siege and seeking refuge in one's own imagination. Leri Price's translation is brilliant, by all accounts capturing the distinct voice and tone of the Arabic original.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
October 17, 2021
I expect to return to review the story of Rima and the war in Syria, but it is possible I won't. I read this because it is on the shortlist for the 2021 National Book Award for Translations.
August 21, 2021
This book will break your heart into smithereens.
That is literally all I wanted to say in this review because the book left me heartbroken and speechless. How can something so terribly, utterly sad, be written in such a beautiful way? You will probably shed many tears of utter sadness, but not be able to put the book down, even though you can probably imagine the outcome.
Hope IS a thing though, even through the darkest of moments, and we experience hope while reading, just as Rima, the main character, continues to hope and dream as she writes.
Rima is a young girl who lives in Damascus with her mother and brother. She decided at the age of 4 to not use her tongue, and is considered a mute by many people as she only speaks to recite or sing verses of the Qur’an. She also spends her time being attached by ties to her mother or to a pole, as she cannot control her feet: when she experiences freedom she cannot stop herself from walking, running away. When her mother is mistakenly shot at a checkpoint Rima’s life changes forever, and the narrative is her story of war, sadness, and death amidst bombs, chemical attacks, and loss.
Rima writes stories in circles, past and present woven together, each circle part of the next one. She sees everything in color, and paints the world she sees in her words, giving us a view of destruction that is very different but equally, if not more, as painful as a video or photograph. I have always loved how gorgeously Samar Yazbek writes, and Planet of Clay is no exception to this. It’s hard to explain just how much this novel will affect you - Rima’s narrative is both bleak and colorful, and she continues to write, to observe, and to leave her legacy, all the while suffering from the affects of a chemical bomb and losing everything she has ever known. I can’t recommend this book enough. Just be prepared to be devastated, but to also hopefully feel the push to do more to help in any way you can.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
That is literally all I wanted to say in this review because the book left me heartbroken and speechless. How can something so terribly, utterly sad, be written in such a beautiful way? You will probably shed many tears of utter sadness, but not be able to put the book down, even though you can probably imagine the outcome.
Hope IS a thing though, even through the darkest of moments, and we experience hope while reading, just as Rima, the main character, continues to hope and dream as she writes.
Rima is a young girl who lives in Damascus with her mother and brother. She decided at the age of 4 to not use her tongue, and is considered a mute by many people as she only speaks to recite or sing verses of the Qur’an. She also spends her time being attached by ties to her mother or to a pole, as she cannot control her feet: when she experiences freedom she cannot stop herself from walking, running away. When her mother is mistakenly shot at a checkpoint Rima’s life changes forever, and the narrative is her story of war, sadness, and death amidst bombs, chemical attacks, and loss.
Rima writes stories in circles, past and present woven together, each circle part of the next one. She sees everything in color, and paints the world she sees in her words, giving us a view of destruction that is very different but equally, if not more, as painful as a video or photograph. I have always loved how gorgeously Samar Yazbek writes, and Planet of Clay is no exception to this. It’s hard to explain just how much this novel will affect you - Rima’s narrative is both bleak and colorful, and she continues to write, to observe, and to leave her legacy, all the while suffering from the affects of a chemical bomb and losing everything she has ever known. I can’t recommend this book enough. Just be prepared to be devastated, but to also hopefully feel the push to do more to help in any way you can.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
July 30, 2021
PLANET OF CLAY
by Samar Yazbek
Have you ever imagine living a life through a war?
A young girl named Rima hardly speaks. Her mother thinks that she has some mental health issues and she is tied in her room. In her mind she longs for walking in freedom wandering the world she wants to explore beyond her one room home. She reads and fills her imagination through The Little Prince, Alice in Wonderland, crayon drawing and Qur`an recitation.
Her innocence might fool people around her but she understands that the city she lives in starts collapsing in the civil war. She sees her mother gets murdered in front of her eyes, gets taken to a military hospital before her brother save her and take her to an area that later is bombarded by Assad forces.
She begins to narrate her life through letters with a pen and whatever she can write on. Her hopefulness is deteriorating since she sees people are killed and bombed. Her stream of consciousness is fading from the chemical bomb. She begins to accept the fear she has and the fantasy world once she had just can no longer become a refuge for her.
The horror of war in the eyes of disabled girl is portrayed physically and mentally throughout the book. The experience of reading it is haunting and exceptional giving a trembling effect once it is finished. Samar Yazbek successfully depicts the tragedy of Syrian civil war sensibly in the unusual perspective.
This one is a memorable reading experience I’ve never had before.
Thank you to Netgalley and World Editions for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.
#IndahMarwanReads
#TheReadingMama
#PlanetofClay
#SamarYazbek
#WomenAuthors
#SyrianLiterature
by Samar Yazbek
Have you ever imagine living a life through a war?
A young girl named Rima hardly speaks. Her mother thinks that she has some mental health issues and she is tied in her room. In her mind she longs for walking in freedom wandering the world she wants to explore beyond her one room home. She reads and fills her imagination through The Little Prince, Alice in Wonderland, crayon drawing and Qur`an recitation.
Her innocence might fool people around her but she understands that the city she lives in starts collapsing in the civil war. She sees her mother gets murdered in front of her eyes, gets taken to a military hospital before her brother save her and take her to an area that later is bombarded by Assad forces.
She begins to narrate her life through letters with a pen and whatever she can write on. Her hopefulness is deteriorating since she sees people are killed and bombed. Her stream of consciousness is fading from the chemical bomb. She begins to accept the fear she has and the fantasy world once she had just can no longer become a refuge for her.
The horror of war in the eyes of disabled girl is portrayed physically and mentally throughout the book. The experience of reading it is haunting and exceptional giving a trembling effect once it is finished. Samar Yazbek successfully depicts the tragedy of Syrian civil war sensibly in the unusual perspective.
This one is a memorable reading experience I’ve never had before.
Thank you to Netgalley and World Editions for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.
#IndahMarwanReads
#TheReadingMama
#PlanetofClay
#SamarYazbek
#WomenAuthors
#SyrianLiterature
September 4, 2021
Rima is a young Syrian girl whose brain doesn’t work quite like other people’s. She can’t talk and once she starts walking, she can’t stop, so has to be tied up, further restricting an already restricted existence. She lives in a poor neighbourhood in Damascus in 2013 and war rages all around her, and we, as readers, view that war through her eyes, a war that she doesn’t understand. In a stream-of-consciousness non-linear narrative, this most unreliable of narrators nevertheless offers a heart-rending and visceral portrait of war at its most brutal. Sometimes the reader feels as bewildered as Rima, and that I found one of the most powerful aspects of this compelling and moving novel. This is war at its harshest because the victims are mostly women and children. She finds refuge in a fantasy world and in her drawings and stories, as bombs rain down around her, but there can be no escape from this terrible civil war. As we are all only too aware. An original, unsettling and deeply troubling read.
May 6, 2022
The premise of Planet of Clay, to have the experience of living during the Syrian civil war narrated by a young girl who appears to be somewhere on the spectrum is an effective and heartbreaking one and for the first half of the book works really well. Children necessarily view such realities in different frames and for a girl like Rima, even more so. She does not speak except to chant the Quran, she does not seem to really feel emotion and is entranced or intrigued by the ‘bubble’ of poison gas and mutilated bodies after bombings. This is in contrast to the emotions and behaviors of those around her and creates this real feeling of isolation and distance yet, perhaps at the same time makes it ‘easier’ to read about these horrific events.
However, elements that are a smaller part of the first half, Rima’s references to the story of the Little Prince, how she sees letters as pictures, planets within this one and multiple digressions about writing and stories, begin to be too big a part of the story. She makes references to the circular nature of the narrative and as the story progresses and her situation gets more and more dire this retreat into her mind and stories could be seem as an escape; nevertheless, I kept wanting to get back to the events happening around her and for other people to feature more. The writing is good, the insight into the war for Syria’s inhabitants is important and towards the end of the book it becomes more compelling but by then I felt it was too late to make up for some of the frustration I felt earlier.
However, elements that are a smaller part of the first half, Rima’s references to the story of the Little Prince, how she sees letters as pictures, planets within this one and multiple digressions about writing and stories, begin to be too big a part of the story. She makes references to the circular nature of the narrative and as the story progresses and her situation gets more and more dire this retreat into her mind and stories could be seem as an escape; nevertheless, I kept wanting to get back to the events happening around her and for other people to feature more. The writing is good, the insight into the war for Syria’s inhabitants is important and towards the end of the book it becomes more compelling but by then I felt it was too late to make up for some of the frustration I felt earlier.
April 12, 2022
"Planet of Clay", by Samar Yazbek, translated by Leri Price, published by World Editions, tells the story of a young girl from Damascus, during the Syrian Civil War. Rima is a young girl who cannot speak, and whose feet cannot stop walking. To protect her, Rima's mother keeps her tied in her room whenever she's alone, and tied to her mother's wrist whenever she is outside. During a checkpoint stop, chaos ensues and Rima is separated from her mother. Along with her older brother, who fights alongside the Free Syrian Army, Rima finds herself in the besieged Eastern Ghouta, where along other people, she needs to survive the lack of food and water, shelling, and the Ghouta chemical attack.
The story is told in a very unique way, as Rima tries to make sense of the world around her with stories like The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland, colors and imagination. It is precisely this innocence that makes the realities of the war even more heart wrecking, and makes this story a memorable one.
The story is told in a very unique way, as Rima tries to make sense of the world around her with stories like The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland, colors and imagination. It is precisely this innocence that makes the realities of the war even more heart wrecking, and makes this story a memorable one.
September 14, 2021
The idiom “feet of clay” is a fit and ancient phrase, I think from the Old Testament. The bible does have some of the best metaphors. Imagine a whole planet of clay, not just the feet, and you’ve arrived at what Yazbek devised and achieved. It also signifies the protagonist’s escape hatch from war, a subtle flourish. Young girl Rima, who was once evaluated for mental issues—she believes her brain is in her feet, and she can’t stop walking--is a refugee of an ongoing war in Damascus. Her mother and brother have been torn from her. She chose to be mute many years ago, exceptions made to sing-reciting the Qur’an. This is a child who cherishes reading The Little Prince. Especially now, as people die in front of her in never-ending numbers, Rima covets her colors, paper, crayons, books, and secret planets. Her fantasy world survives long rifles and short tempers.
Along with her resolve and her books, Rima has her secret planets, crayons, paper, paints, shapes, and letters that endures from the destruction all around her. Rima channels and sustains through war with art, hope, and playful ideas. In The Little Prince, the aviator has to embrace his inner child, and Saint-Exupéry’s book is dedicated to the child the man used to be. Rima is the child that sees what men do, what they are when filled with explosive violence and deadly gases. Planet of Clay is about acceptance, imagination, compassion, and don’t forget love. Rima survives by her self-reliance, creativity, and curiosity. She copes through art.
Here on her own, Rima draws the shape and sound of words. She sees the colors of war, and is sometimes bedazzled by a lustrous shade of blue that come from the gases that kill; sometimes Rima sees a blur of dull grey, or only one color. It’s searing to apprehend that the novel in front of you is about a young person’s final journey, but for them it is not entirely sad.
“Each one of my secret planets has its own importance, but the Planet of Clay has exceptional importance. This planet won’t disappear until I disappear.”
Thank you to World Editions for sending me an early copy for review. This is a tragic but exquisite fantasy story during a time of war, the beauty and vastness that a child finds while the world is screeching and turning to colorless dust. 4.5 rounded up
Along with her resolve and her books, Rima has her secret planets, crayons, paper, paints, shapes, and letters that endures from the destruction all around her. Rima channels and sustains through war with art, hope, and playful ideas. In The Little Prince, the aviator has to embrace his inner child, and Saint-Exupéry’s book is dedicated to the child the man used to be. Rima is the child that sees what men do, what they are when filled with explosive violence and deadly gases. Planet of Clay is about acceptance, imagination, compassion, and don’t forget love. Rima survives by her self-reliance, creativity, and curiosity. She copes through art.
Here on her own, Rima draws the shape and sound of words. She sees the colors of war, and is sometimes bedazzled by a lustrous shade of blue that come from the gases that kill; sometimes Rima sees a blur of dull grey, or only one color. It’s searing to apprehend that the novel in front of you is about a young person’s final journey, but for them it is not entirely sad.
“Each one of my secret planets has its own importance, but the Planet of Clay has exceptional importance. This planet won’t disappear until I disappear.”
Thank you to World Editions for sending me an early copy for review. This is a tragic but exquisite fantasy story during a time of war, the beauty and vastness that a child finds while the world is screeching and turning to colorless dust. 4.5 rounded up
November 2, 2024
Edit: I am so happy to see that this book one of the finalists at national book awards.
This is a look into the war through the eyes of a young girl who doesn't fully understand what's going on around her. There is so much innocence to her, lack of understanding of the world - of not just politics but the reality of the situation in general. It is unclear from the narration - as this is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, the exact kind of mental health issues the girl faces, but it is clear that she is facing some as she has the habit of walking away from home, and her mother ties her to a bed to make her stay put.
Through her eyes, we see war. The young girl clearly has great imagination, has wonderful grasp of words, knows Quran from memory though she has difficulty in communicating. Tragedy strikes and from then on, moment to moment, she struggles to cope. She learns to read fear in eyes of people, and recognize hopelessness in her own.
Yazbek offers an unforgettable perspective of horrors of war at the very ground level.
Thank you to Netgalley and World Editions for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.
This is a look into the war through the eyes of a young girl who doesn't fully understand what's going on around her. There is so much innocence to her, lack of understanding of the world - of not just politics but the reality of the situation in general. It is unclear from the narration - as this is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, the exact kind of mental health issues the girl faces, but it is clear that she is facing some as she has the habit of walking away from home, and her mother ties her to a bed to make her stay put.
Through her eyes, we see war. The young girl clearly has great imagination, has wonderful grasp of words, knows Quran from memory though she has difficulty in communicating. Tragedy strikes and from then on, moment to moment, she struggles to cope. She learns to read fear in eyes of people, and recognize hopelessness in her own.
Yazbek offers an unforgettable perspective of horrors of war at the very ground level.
Thank you to Netgalley and World Editions for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.
January 22, 2022
A fascinating look at the war in Syria from the perspective of a teen girl. But Rima is no ordinary narrator. She is mute (possibly selective mutism, as she is able to recite, and the more she wants to speak the more she is unable to). She wanders--her mother has always kept a rope tied between their wrists to not lose her. She has little fear and knows little about the world, but how much of this is from naivete and isolation is unclear. Rima has an intense and creative inner life--she creates and writes stories (though her writing may not be standard Arabic--flourished? Illuminated? Pictorial?); she reads and memorizes and can recite the Koran.
On a day trip to visit a friend, Rima's mother is shot and killed by a guard. Her brother comes to get Rima from the hospital, and her world gets more confusing and complicated as her brother is a fighter, and she must be tied at home to keep her safe.
I found this story fascinating, and I realize I have never considered how war creates even more difficulties for parents of disabled children/adults and their siblings. In Rima's case, she must be tied to keep her home, but be able to reach bed/toilet/safety from bombs. She cannot work or be sent to scavenge food, because she will wander. Her perspective, though is enlightening and logical--why hide from the bombs, there is nowhere safe. She observes everything.
A very interesting look at life inside this ongoing conflict.
On a day trip to visit a friend, Rima's mother is shot and killed by a guard. Her brother comes to get Rima from the hospital, and her world gets more confusing and complicated as her brother is a fighter, and she must be tied at home to keep her safe.
I found this story fascinating, and I realize I have never considered how war creates even more difficulties for parents of disabled children/adults and their siblings. In Rima's case, she must be tied to keep her home, but be able to reach bed/toilet/safety from bombs. She cannot work or be sent to scavenge food, because she will wander. Her perspective, though is enlightening and logical--why hide from the bombs, there is nowhere safe. She observes everything.
A very interesting look at life inside this ongoing conflict.
Read
March 8, 2022"I was convinced there were things happening, puzzling things that couldn't be justified. This place might be like the world that Alice went into when she found herself in Wonderland; I said that to you before. Actually, the world wasn't at all colourful like Wonderland was. The cats vanished and didn't reappear" (117).
A gut-wrenching rendering of life under siege, by an unforgettable child narrator.
A gut-wrenching rendering of life under siege, by an unforgettable child narrator.
August 25, 2024
A young woman trying to survive the Syrian civil war. This book reads like an expanded version of Tanya's Leningrad diary.. Her innocent bewilderment at the whole situation is very bleak, as are the overwhelmed feelings of those caring for her
October 3, 2022
This book was very hard to read. It takes place in the midst of a war zone, which is true of a number of award nominated and winning documentaries, but somehow this story is more graphic, more real, and just as brutal.
Rima, a young neurodivergent girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. She finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people do not know quite what to make of her, but she is just doing her best—the madness in the battered city around her would change us all for the worse. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. This book, nominated for a National Book Award, offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.
Rima, a young neurodivergent girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. She finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people do not know quite what to make of her, but she is just doing her best—the madness in the battered city around her would change us all for the worse. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. This book, nominated for a National Book Award, offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.
April 13, 2021
Do you want to know what war feels like? Not as a soldier or politician but as an innocent young girl who doesn't know about politics or what this is all about.
In this stream of consciousness novel Rima is sitting in a cellar from where she can't escape. In this cellar there's a lot of paper and one pen. She's writing her story and we'll learn in bits and pieces how she got there.
Her refuge are planets she creates within and around her that are inspired by the books she loves like The Little Prince or Alice in Wonderland.
She used to see the world in colors, but now all the colors are gone. The fear is palpable.
I know some Syrian refugees and after reading this book I understand why they never talk about the horrors of war.
In this stream of consciousness novel Rima is sitting in a cellar from where she can't escape. In this cellar there's a lot of paper and one pen. She's writing her story and we'll learn in bits and pieces how she got there.
Her refuge are planets she creates within and around her that are inspired by the books she loves like The Little Prince or Alice in Wonderland.
She used to see the world in colors, but now all the colors are gone. The fear is palpable.
I know some Syrian refugees and after reading this book I understand why they never talk about the horrors of war.
November 17, 2021
Rima is a truly wonderful narrator, acting real and natural in so many ways while reminding the reader of the chasm between us and her. Yazbek's ability to so convincingly embody such a wonderful character in the first person is incredible and a testament to simple languages and ideas. The references to Alice in Wonderland and The Little Prince were comforting among the awareness I had of Rima's surroundings that she seemingly did not possess (although, such a sharp girl cannot be underestimated). As I was gripped heading to the novel's conclusion I felt Rima had proved a converse to Borges' observation that "one of the habits of the mind is the invention of horrible imaginings"; the horrible imaginings were her reality, and her mind chose to create beauty, and share it with us.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 12, 2021
I've never read anything like this stream-of-consciousness story told in the voice of Rima, a young teenaged girl living amidst the atrocities of the Syrian civil war. With an imagination built by her love of books (The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland key among them), Rima spins a non-linear memoir that delves into the physical and mental horrors inflicted by Assad and his forces, her own fantasy worlds filled with color, the colorlessness of her bombed-out reality, and her desire to walk away and follow her feet wherever they want to take her. Yazbek infuses the story with a rich and unique voice that I won't soon forget.
December 10, 2022
Je bent jong en praat niet, je wilt steeds weglopen en daarom wordt je vastgebonden.
Je vertelt dmv tekeningen en verhalen...
Verhalen die ze schrijft met een blauwe pen.... de inkt raakt op.... zoveel raakt op en verdwijnt....
Je kon en kunt nog steeds wegdromen met het verhaal "De kleine prins"...
En dan beginnen de bombardementen.....
Een kind gaat van de ene gedachte / herinnering naar de andere... Ze wil zoveel "vertellen" maar dwaalt af door andere herinneringen die boven komen en toch ook wel uitgelegd moeten worden.
Geen boek wat gemakkelijk leest, indrukwekkend.
Je vertelt dmv tekeningen en verhalen...
Verhalen die ze schrijft met een blauwe pen.... de inkt raakt op.... zoveel raakt op en verdwijnt....
Je kon en kunt nog steeds wegdromen met het verhaal "De kleine prins"...
En dan beginnen de bombardementen.....
Een kind gaat van de ene gedachte / herinnering naar de andere... Ze wil zoveel "vertellen" maar dwaalt af door andere herinneringen die boven komen en toch ook wel uitgelegd moeten worden.
Geen boek wat gemakkelijk leest, indrukwekkend.
November 28, 2022
I have many thoughts I'm working to organize thoughtfully, but my central issue with the book is with the larger trend of transforming the problematic noble savage into a still-problematic noble autist as a literary trope to communicate innocence in a corrupt or complex world. While still a rare perspective for western readers into the Syrian Civil War, the stylistic choice was ... why it received a lower rating from me. I'm leaving it at that here.
March 5, 2024
Myślałam, że będzie 5 gwiazdek, ale końcówka jest trochę nużąca, choć rozumiem jej rolę.
Ogólnie bardzo piękna książka pełna bólu. Główna bohaterka i narratorka ma niezwykle unikatowe spojrzenie na świat a cała powieść jest pięknie napisana i ma niezwykle plastyczne opisy.
Ogólnie bardzo piękna książka pełna bólu. Główna bohaterka i narratorka ma niezwykle unikatowe spojrzenie na świat a cała powieść jest pięknie napisana i ma niezwykle plastyczne opisy.
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