Ghada Alatrash, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. She holds a PhD in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, the University of Calgary, and a Master's Degree in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to oppression and dictatorship.

"Fadi Azzam proves to us that there are still undiscovered gems in Arabic literature... beautiful writing, long stifled by dictatorship, has just begun to free itself from the grips of censorship. Sarmada and its women dance in front of us with all their senses; they take us by the hand and escort us into their village homes, where the events of this great novel take place."----Rafik Schami on Sarmada

"Brimful of magic, Sarmada is a book to be swallowed in rapturous gulps. It's beautifully written ... This is a very Syrian novel, illustrating sectarian co-existence and providing glimpses of the country's mystical and literary wonders ... Sarmada is, indirectly, an early novel of the contemporary Arab revolutions."----The Independent on Sarmada

"Huddud's House is one of those beautiful texts that paint the darkness of reality without confining it to the Syrian space ... Difficult love stories intersect as the author takes the reader on a journey through the depths of the human soul that desires, craves, hates, is jealous, and fights for those desires ..."----Fadhila El Farouk

"A landmark work of contemporary Arabic literature, at once allusive and defiant ... An enigmatic novel of resistance by the prizewinning Syrian writer in exile. Huddud's house is a real place in Azzam's elegantly unfolding story, a ramshackle maze containing 170,000 Arabic books and 12,000 manuscripts ... Given the subversive themes that punctuate a narrative that, at its best, is reminiscent of García Márquez, it's small wonder that its author has fled Syria for the safety of Britain."---- Kirkus Reviews

"Azzam brilliantly conveys the growing apprehension and tension of a society gradually slipping into totalitarianism."---- Booklist