Within the activities of the # Hadith_ Books initiative organized by Celebration of Sharjah, the international capital of the book 2019, Iraqi “Al-Rawi” cultural cafe hosted the Sharjah novelist Sinan Anton, during a dialogue session that dealt with the translated version of the English version of his novel “Index”.
The author, speaking at the session, which was moderated by the editor-in-chief of the "National" Mina Al-Uraibi, spoke about his deep affliction to the war in his motherland, Iraq. Through his narration, he conveyed realistic pictures of the daily life that civilians lived at that time, which were often erased from the memory of history .
"I write primarily for Iraqi and Arab readers, and my book provides an image of things of heritage importance, and it deals with many social traditions rooted in the details of Iraqi society life, by breathing life into inanimate objects such as the Kashan rug, which used to decorate the floors of happy homes," Anton added. And the trees that I write on my tongue are the embodiment of the suffering and pain that you feel when it is cut down. ”
He continued: «Pre-Islamic poetry is rich in poems that embodied things as if they were living beings, and in this novel I benefited from my reading of poetry a lot, as I mixed poetry, prose and news to present an old novel that does not imitate the styles of the prevailing western novel, but rather moved away from it to present a new and innovative work.
On the sidelines of the session, "Al-Rawi" organized a special signing ceremony for the writer Sinan Anton, as he left his signature on a collection of his books. He also met with the attendees who exchanged the discussion with him and answered their questions related to his literature and his creative experience in the field of literature.
Try to adapt
Sinan Anton emphasized that the novel is an attempt to adapt to the feeling of loss and realize the size of the loss: “The novel begins as soon as the idea is born in my imagination, and writing is not just a narration of a story, and since this book tells about destruction, I had to reflect this in its structure.”