DAMASCUS: Taste of a City

by Rafik Schami and Marie Fadel

Date: 2006-01-06

to read more about the authors or to buy the book click HERE

'Haus Publishing is to be congratulated on its new series, Armchair Traveller. Each one is neatly sized to fit a large pocket and very satisfying to hold, with its heavy cream pages with ample margins and an easy-on-the-eye design. The jackets themselves, illustrated continuously from front to back, urge the reader to open up and get started on the tour. And soon as he/she opens there’s the first surprise – a double-page pull-out transparent map of the area or city being travelled.

This volume about Damascus is by Marie Fadel, as told to her famous novelist brother Rafik Schami. Having lived in Damascus until he was 25 years old, in all his years afterwards in Germany Rafik could never forget the tastes of his home city, while cooking became for him a passion and an art, “at once physical and practical”. . . an “essential challenge”. ‘..an enthralling book, in which the tales, the thirty-six dishes and the city are mixed into a delicious mezza that wets the reader's appetite...' MARGARET OBANK Banipal
http://www.banipal.co.uk/book_reviews/review.php?reviewid=9

‘Damascus: Taste of a City has to be one of the oddest travel books I have ever come across. A Syrian living in exile in Europe, Rafik Schami spent a year going for “walks” with his sister through the teeming alleyways, markets and street-kitchens of Damascus – she on her mobile and he at home in Europe.
 So this is really Marie Fadel’s book – her words bringing the sights, sounds and smells of the city alive, and her recipes coming at the end of each chapter. It also has the distinction of being perhaps the only piece of travel writing whose putative author was as armchair-bound as its readers.’
Ned Denny, The Daily Mail, 6 January 2006

'... [a] clever travelogue...painting an evocative portrait of a city...' SUSAN SWARBRICK The Glasgow Herald
to read more about the author or buy the book click HERE