The Silence and the Roar: A Novel

A heartbreaking, but beautiful, piece of literature. You see the mind of a dictator and the heart of of his victims laid bare. Truly an amazing read.

This was a very quick read. Interesting plot which could really be applied to many dictatorial regimes around the world.

An interesting short fictional book examining the meaning and possibilities of roar (e.g., sound, propaganda, forced civilian marches) and silence (e.g., repression, stillness, absence, death). Set in Syria, the book unfolds with life under a dictatorship and the web of lies and propaganda (i.e., the roar) spun and woven to elevate the status and position of the leader at the detriment of the people. The protagonist is an author who has been banned from publishing his works and is hence forced into "silence" through manipulation in various ways. I thought of this as a Syrian 1984. Thought provoking book.

Waste of good reading time. ER

This is a good short novel. It is is sparsely written, but creates a great sense of the suffocating physical heat of a middle Eastern country and the dead hand of a dictatorship.The hero Fathi, is a well known, previously encouraged and popular writer who has fallen out of favour with the regime. It's really a loud scream about the difficulty of staying true to an individual's artistic potential and yet fitting in with the prevailing worldview as well. The author describes the silent scream of a writer whose creativity is being strangled and denied as it does not fit with the party line. He is an individual who refuses to fit in, much to the annoyance of the regime. Meanwhile he watches endless marches and demonstrations in favour of the Great Leader...but who is marching against the great leader? The scenario here is not one of the milder versions we have in the West- about whether we have the The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear or not. It's about an existential choice of whether to write or not, and whether the silence of the grave is worse than the inner roar about being silenced by others. The supporters and fellow travellers of the regime are well described. They are humans who have either actively chosen or passively acquiesced alongside the regime, either for personal gain or an easier life. The question really comes about how far they believe the regime's own propaganda, and how much they find it convenient to go along with it, realising it is nonsense all the while. Anne Applebaum described these cognitive dynamics well in the Eastern European setting in Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 This story feels like the Middle Eastern version of Winston Smith's experience in 1984 and like Winston the hero of this book seeks refuge in the love of a woman. The relationship is well described. Of course people know what the hero- Fathi- is thinking and is up to. Eventually he is led to a choice of whether to collaborate by helping the regime write its propaganda to to find a way out of the country. Can he be an individual within such a system? He's led to his choice by Mr Ha'el who plays the same role in this story as O'Brien does in 1984. Nihad Sirees has written a great book about what it is like to live under a totalitarian state. It's a work of witness to injustice shot through with a strong sense of affronted humanity.

A 1984-ish political allegory by a Syrian author. We’re in a dystopian society in the Middle East where The Leader, always capitalized, has created a society that not only worships him but exists to worship him. His picture and quotations from his speeches and poetry are everywhere. Government offices are literally wall-papered with his photos. “Any hint of individuality is a threat directed at the Leader’s supremacy.” Periodic parades with required participation by all males are constant. During these well-organized demonstrations the speeches by the Leader or those praising his brilliance are broadcast throughout the city full blast over speakers. Those not in attendance are required to view the speech on television with the volume turned up full blast. Because of the heat, everyone has their windows open so you can’t escape the ROAR of the title. The Leader and the ruling elite spend all their time watching re-runs of the parades and his speeches. No one can leave their house or enter any building without an ID card. Police goons are everywhere. Our main character is a 31-year-old man who used to be a columnist and a writer of novels with a political bent poking fun at those in power. He can write no more because of the complete control of the society by the Leader. All his former works are banned. He lives off his wealthy mother’s money. Yet the writer had been well known and the political leadership is not happy with his being silent. They want him now to write slogans and speeches for the establishment. His father has died but his mother is shortly to marry a high official in the government, a friend of the Leader. The author’s woman friend helps him see how this is all a set-up to force him to comply with their wishes. His mother is actually under threat of personal violence. What is he to do? I liked this story. It’s short and frightening. The constant tumult created by the regime comes across as well as the constant heat. No one appears to have air conditioning, just fans. He intervenes with the police beating someone up and gets his ID confiscated. He has to walk his way through a byzantine bureaucracy with goons and threats to try to get it back. His friend tells him don’t sass them back, just do what they say, but of course he can’t do that. Is this going to end well for anyone? We also get a bit of hot sex with his woman friend. And some philosophy about leadership – how Alexander the Great expected worship in the East but was not silly enough to expect that in Greece – although worshiping emperors eventually came about in Rome. We read the thoughts of Hannah Arendt about how the masses need a leader, but vice-versa too. In addition to three novels the author (1950 -) has written scripts for TV series The Silk Market and about Kahil Gibran. This book was banned in Syria and the author eventually fled Syria to live in Berlin.

Nihad Sirees is a Syrian author in exile. He writes with eloquence and bravery about the fall of a nation and its people to an authoritarian dictator. The narrator of the novel, a man named Mr. Fahti, is a writer who has lost his position -- and his authorial voice -- because of his opposition to the regime. While he's famous enough to stay out of the grave, he exists in the country's shrinking marginal spaces -- in between rallies, marches and propaganda. He visits his mother. He spends time with his lover, Lama. He visits his sister. He walks the city. He remembers and imagines. As the crowds roar around him, as the Leader's voice is amplified ad nauseum, Fahti creates his own inner silence through internal dialogue and story making. He battles the roar with that silence. After several Kafka-esque encounters with the goons who serve the state. Fahti is given a choice -- continue his silence or join the roar of the oppressor. Sirees creates a marvelous character in Fahti -- a man who battles the madness around him through love and laughter. Key Quotes: "All you have to do is withdraw inside yourself and listen to your own inner voice and forget all about the annoying sounds that constitute the roar."(112) "Talking to oneself may be a sickness but it can be effective in keeping a person from going insane." (113) "I believe that love and peace are the right way to confront tyranny." ~ Afterword

In the heartbreaking afterword written for the English translation of this book, author Nihad Sirees closes by saying, “As I present my novel to the English reader, my heart is agonizingly heavy about what is happening in Syria, my homeland.” Sirees has been in self-imposed exile from Syria since 2012 due to personal and political harassment. This novel, which was translated into English just last year, was originally published in Arabic in 2004, and has been banned in Syria for years. Do a Google images or news search for Aleppo, the city where Sirees was born, and you will be bombarded with photos and articles that are evidence of a decade’s worth of devastation and destruction. Daily, stories out of Syria prove that it continues to be shattered by war, rebels (like ISIS), and rocket fire. The Silence and the Roar is set in a Middle Eastern Country whose precise location is never named. But, not surprisingly, it feels strikingly similar to Sirees’ home country. Needless to say, this diminutive novel is not light reading. The book, a day-in-the-life of Fathi Sheen, is a parable about life in this unnamed Middle Eastern country. The citizens are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the reigning tyrant, referred to only as “the Leader.” As the title suggests, the book explores the contrast between the simultaneous silence and roar imposed by a despotic regime. The silence refers to censorship, imprisonment, or even death. In contrast, the roar is the noise of ardor and forced fervor, chants and megaphones (“Thought is retribution, a crime, treason against the Leader. And insofar as calm and tranquility can incite a person to think, it is essential to drag out the masses to these roaring marches every once in a while to brainwash them and keep them from committing the crime of thought. What else could be the point of all that noise?”). As Sirees explains in his afterword: "In countries ruled by people obsessed with supremacy, authoritarians and those who are crazed by power, the ruler or the leader imposes silence upon all those who dare to think outside the prevailing norm. Silence can be the muffling of one’s voice or the banning of one’s publications, as is the case with Fathi Sheen, the protagonist of this novel. Or it might be the silence of a cell in a political prison or, without trying to unnecessarily frighten anyone, the silence of the grave. But this silence is also accompanied by an expansive roar, one that renders thought impossible. Thought leads to individualization, which is the most powerful enemy of the dictator. People must not think about the leader and how he runs the country; they must simply adore him, want to die for him in their adoration of him. Therefore, the leader creates a roar all around him, forcing people to celebrate him, to roar." It is no surprise, of course, that when given the choice between the two terrible sides of despotism, Fathi chooses silence. His television program about authors has been cancelled (for his refusal to do a writing contest celebrating the Leader). His writings have been banned. He is out of work. He is harassed for his failure to participate in the anniversary marches. And he is suffering from “a continuous state of unhappiness or self-loathing” as he attempts to escape the roar. I’ve managed to make this book sound awfully dark . . . and rightly so. But, even at only 154 pages, a book that handled this subject matter in a totally straight-forward manner could be a bit too heavy to handle. What makes this book so strong and so successful, however, is that it relies on humor to tell Fathi’s tale. Fathi is able to fend off the despot’s roar because he relies on laughter and love (and sex) to get him through the worst of times. “Give me a name for what’s going on here,” someone begs Fathi, seeking to make sense of the world in which they’re living, a world where “human beings have absolutely no value whatsoever.” The word that springs to Fathi’s mind is Surrealism. Sirees recognizes the horribly ridiculous and unbelievable nature of the world in which Fathi is living. He acknowledges many different coping mechanisms (like Fathi’s sister’s method of being “a dummy among dummies”), but ultimately he shows us that “love and peace are the right way to confront tyranny.” He allows Fathi to exhibit strength in the face of this Surrealism—not physical strength or violence, mind you, but mental strength. It is a powerful book with a powerful message. I often praise non-fiction books that read like fiction. On the flip side, fictional books that have the power to educate like non-fiction are equally laudable. And this book certainly falls into the latter category.