(Secret Ink), a novel documenting part of the war with its psychological and societal repercussions

Tartous  (ST): The novel “Secret Ink” by the writer Duha Ahmed documents part of the war on Syria from her point of view and the psychological and humanitarian repercussions it has had on Syrian society.

Ahmed chose this title because it is due to the hidden repercussions of wars, secret or declared, written in the ink of time and the heart, indicating that in the novel she tried to follow the events of the war through good and perhaps evil characters amid the chaos of masks, ruin and the instincts of individual and collective survival.

The multiplicity of voices in the novel creates narration vitality, artistic aesthetics, and quality in the movement of characters within a temporal and spatial container with narrative content and social emotional style, so we hear the noise of battles between words and shed tears for stories of human pain.

The novel consists of five chapters narrated by Reham, the protagonist of the novel, and her relationship with the characters. The great love links her to Imad, who suffered from war because of his former girlfriend who was taken captive by terrorist groups. The novel completes by illuminating the lives of Syrians and the story of their asylum in Europe and their presence in Egypt. The novel ends in Italy and the repercussions of the global pandemic Covid 19.

K.Q.