The Censor's Journey in Search of Self

Authoritarianism is no longer merely a local issue in a Third World dictatorship, but rather a global trait regaining its harshest features, as if all theories of freedom were buried and their traces forgotten.

Even though Sumer Shuhada—in his newly published novel The Tale of Mr.

Screw (Hikayat Al-Sayyid Al-Burghi), released by Dar Al-Adab—draws inspiration from the Syrian context he lived through, the text eschews defining a specific setting.

It leaves the characters unbound by the shackles of proper names, living out their bitter, Kafkaesque human existence without major shocks or revolutionary upheavals. ...