Polish Journal of English Studies (Jun 2017)
From Vivid to Darker ‘Shades of the War’ – Sumis Sukkar’s Fictionalization of Syrian Trauma
Abstract
This article is devoted to Sumia Sukkar, a young British author, whose debut novel The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War seems an important voice in debates on the repercussions of the Syrian conflict. The novelist’s decision, due to her national descent (she is of Syrian origin), to create a fictional narrative, which serves more as a moral intervention in matters of public concern, derives from Sukkar’s personal conviction that one cannot hold aloof from the carnage going on in Syria. Although written in 2013, the book, with its emphasis on the unending war ‘games’ and unrelenting violence in the Middle East, turns out to be even more valid today than before. With this voice of moderation, Western readers have been given yet another chance to delve into the nature of the Syrian conflict, presented from the position of a devout Muslim believer as well as a person of ethical integrity. Hers is the narrative in which changing colors symbolically reflect a slow deterioration of individual mindsets. In this sense, Sukkar’s novel seems more like an important attempt to ‘find an adequate objective correlative’ that in a comprehensive way enables one to gain insight into traumas of the local conflict/war.
