Reviews

Out of Time: The Collected Short Stories of Samira Azzam by Samîra Azzâm

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itschlve's review

emotional reflective

4.0

Beautiful short stories collection, I love picturesque and vivid it is. Writing about life, how eventful or uneventful it can, the mundane happenings and how people are affected by it. Ultimately, the people are really at the center of it all, their lives, their feelings, their emotions - and you can feel them even if their stories are short, you can see them living, coming and going as we have a window on their lives for a very short time. Then i said people but it's mostly women, their lives, and how the world around them affects them.

skoopnl's review

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4.0

A vaiety of short stories. Some seem mundane but need more attention. Others are intense and emotional. The most impressive one is "On the water to Solomon's Pools", which took my breath away and required me to take a break from reading to be able to process what I had just read.

pamslibrary's review

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emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I'm not as big on short collections but this one was marvellous. The writing is beautiful and the characters with their stories were very very human. I loved the stories so much and even though they all read as separate, it made me feel almost as if they all lived in the same neighbourhood/place.

obstinateheadstrongcurl's review against another edition

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emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

An excellent collection of short stories, showcasing small vignettes of Palestinian life both under occupation in Palestine and in exile. I enjoyed the pacing of this collection, how the themes become more explicit as it goes on. The book also features a lovely introduction by the brilliant Adania Shibli.

musaho's review

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3.0

I unfortunately was not as enthralled as I expected to be, but upon reflection I don't think that's important.

From my understanding, the value of Samira Azzam's work is not found in one's subjective enjoyment of her stories, but the wider context of what they mean for Palestine. As Adania Shibli notes in the forward, most of Azzam's stories (save for a few at the end of this collection) do not directly, if at all, address the occupation. Her work therefore offers reflections on what was and imaginings of what can be a normal life for Palestinians, one not defined by settler-colonialism, and rather focuses on the smaller tragedies of life.

I loved some stories, I thought most were fine, and there were some I found jarring. Azzam's writing (or perhaps Abdelrahman's translation?) was just okay in some stories, but beautiful in others, likely due to the fact that she wrote them at very different times in her life as an author.

But as I said, none of that really matters. I'm happy to have read a classic Palestinian author, one who is important to their literary cannon, and one who I agree deserves to be celebrated.