A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul's Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer - and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to interrogate the man's mysterious widow, the Secret Service takes the case away from him. Barudi continues to investigate clandestinely and discovers the murderer's motive: it is a blood feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans, reaching back to the beginnings of the 20th century. And, linked to it, a love story that can have no happy ending, for reconciliation has no place within the old tribal structures. Rafik Schami's dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.

Salim the coachman tells enchanting tales, but suddenly he is struck dumb. Just as Scheherazade told tales to save her life, Salim's friends must spin yarns to save his speech. Set in Damascus in 1959, the novel alternates the real lives of our storytellers with stories from the distant past. These are neither fables nor fairy tales with everlasting, happy endings, and they often require readers to suspend their disbelief. Each chapter is preceded by a one-line hint of what is to come, such as 'How one person's true story was not believed, whereas his most blatant lie was.'

Even as a young man, Hamid Farsi is acclaimed as a master of the art of calligraphy. But as time goes by, he sees that weaknesses in the Arabic language and its script limit its uses in the modern world. In a secret society, he works out schemes for radical reform, never guessing what risks he is running. His beautiful wife, Noura, is ignorant of the great plans on her husband's mind. She knows only his cold, avaricious side and so it is no wonder she feels flattered by the attentions of his amusing, lively young apprentice. And so begins a passionate love story of a Muslim woman and a Christian man.

Text in Arabic. Fatima lives with her mother and brother, Hassan. One day, Hassan goes out to seek his fortune, but runs afoul of an evil Lord who takes his dreams and sends him home empty-handed. Fatima is determined to get her brothers dreams back, and to secure her familys livelihood.

Damascus was Rafik Schami's home for twenty-five years before he sought exile in Europe, and this "Pearl of the Orient" is still the city he loves more than any other. Thirty years later, and now a prize-winning novelist, Schami has written a culinary-cultural book on his old home town. Two seemingly insurmountable barriers stood in the way of the writing of it--time and geography. So Schami's sister Marie wandered through Damascus for a year on his behalf, relaying the curiosities, sounds, personalities, tastes, and smells of the Old City while Schami wrote them down, relishing the indelible and diverse mark left on Damascene cuisine by the city's multifarious history.

Rafik Schami is the critically acclaimed author of "The Dark Side of Love" (Interlink Books, 2009).