Osama Alomar, in his poetic fictions, embodies the wisdom of Kahlil Gibran filtered through the violent gray absurdity of Assad’s police state. Fullblood Arabian is the first English publication of Alomar’s strange, often humorously satirical allegories, where good and evil battle with indifference, avarice, and compassion in striking imagery and effervescent language.
I read in a book the following piece of wisdom: “He who remains silent in the face of injustice is a mute Satan.” I went out into the street and saw Satan everywhere.
[His stories] convey a raw combination of beauty and resignation, as if the two were created to reside under the same roof, hope and hurt at one …. Alomar is a man of small but universally affecting insights.
—The American
The stories’ distinctive flavour comes from Alomar’s masterful shifts of character perspective within extremely tight parameters.…The book is full of these moments which trip you up, swing bluntly from one psyche to another, rapidly decelerate time and play with scale, all of it exposing the delicate balance of our presumptions and allegiances; the small dictatorships that we foster second by second.
—Emma Jacobs, Asymptote Blog
In Alomar’s stories…fantasy never devolves into mere whimsy. His magical imaginative creations are, every one, inspired by his deeply felt philosophical, moral, and political convictions, giving these tales a heartfelt urgency.
