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A review by adam613
Planet of Clay by Samar Yazbek
4.0
"Don't think that what you are reading is a novel. What I'm writing is the truth, and I am doing it to try and understand what happened."
Rima is a young girl from Damascus who sees life in colours and sings the Qu'ran. She listens more than she speaks and she is restrained from running as she seeks to make sense of the unimaginable horrors around her during the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek writes an uncanny exploration of acute conditions for the developing mind and spirit of Rima.
"Things don't exist before you feel them."
The book opens with the longest chapter and a sign of things to come as Rima and her mother are passing through checkpoints on their way to visit a friend. With surreal and poetic writing that engages with tension hanging from every paragraph, Rima's story is not unlike many other children's experiences in these horrific settings. Rima shows a strength that is hopeful or delusional, I am not sure. As the story continues, we can see her hope begin to fray at the edges of her sanity as she descends into further desperation for her survival surrounded by loss and destruction.
"I would like not to forget these moments I am writing down, because I can't draw them and they will be lost in my mind, just as I have lost many details from my old life."
I am still at a loss for words at the force and vulnerability of this book. From Rima's introspections on the colour of the purple sky, the eyes of others and the meanings of circles in stories, Planet Clay is a beyond powerful piece of translated literature from from a child's perspective in a part of the world we don't often read about. Full of incantations and imagination, Samar Yazbek has written about a world that melds the magical with the tragic to create a truly harrowing and emotional tale that hits the heart in all the human places.
"It would be beautiful if every death had its own colour. Death is a hat that makes colours invisible."
Rima is a young girl from Damascus who sees life in colours and sings the Qu'ran. She listens more than she speaks and she is restrained from running as she seeks to make sense of the unimaginable horrors around her during the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek writes an uncanny exploration of acute conditions for the developing mind and spirit of Rima.
"Things don't exist before you feel them."
The book opens with the longest chapter and a sign of things to come as Rima and her mother are passing through checkpoints on their way to visit a friend. With surreal and poetic writing that engages with tension hanging from every paragraph, Rima's story is not unlike many other children's experiences in these horrific settings. Rima shows a strength that is hopeful or delusional, I am not sure. As the story continues, we can see her hope begin to fray at the edges of her sanity as she descends into further desperation for her survival surrounded by loss and destruction.
"I would like not to forget these moments I am writing down, because I can't draw them and they will be lost in my mind, just as I have lost many details from my old life."
I am still at a loss for words at the force and vulnerability of this book. From Rima's introspections on the colour of the purple sky, the eyes of others and the meanings of circles in stories, Planet Clay is a beyond powerful piece of translated literature from from a child's perspective in a part of the world we don't often read about. Full of incantations and imagination, Samar Yazbek has written about a world that melds the magical with the tragic to create a truly harrowing and emotional tale that hits the heart in all the human places.
"It would be beautiful if every death had its own colour. Death is a hat that makes colours invisible."