Voices of the Lost

Translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth

2022 Longlist

In an unnamed country torn apart by war, six strangers are compelled to share their darkest secrets. Taking pen to paper, each attempts to put in writing what they can’t bring themselves to say to the person they love – mother, father, brother, lost love. Their words form a chain of dark confessions, none of which reaches the intended recipient. But their consequences will ripple through other lives, affecting strangers in ways the writers could never have anticipated…

Luminous and haunting, Voices of the Lost tells the moving story of characters living on the periphery, battling displacement, poverty, and the demons within themselves. From one of today’s most talented Arabic writers, this is the story of lives intimately woven together in a society that is tearing itself apart.

About the Author/Translator

Hoda Barakat was born in Beirut and has published five novels and two plays. Her novels have been translated into several languages and received numerous prestigious prize nominations, including the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for The Tiller of Waters (2000). In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.

Marilyn Booth is professor of Arabic languages and literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. She is an active literary translator, mostly of contemporary Arabic fiction into English and has translated novels, short stories, and memoirs. In 2019, Marilyn was the co-winner of the Man Booker International Prize, as translator of Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies.

Librarian’s Comments

Its a novel about war and love, also it is a political novel which reveal the secrets of orient societies, ranging from filial to romantic, abuse, trauma, fatherhood, motherhood its all in there. Slemani Public Library, Iraq