Damascus

Taste of a City
By Rafik Schami & Marie Fadel

It is said that when a man has lived seven years in Damascus, Damascus lives with him.

Damascus was Rafik Schami's home for 25 years before he went into exile, and he never forgot it. This 'Pearl of the Orient' is still the city he loves more than any other.
Thirty years later, and now a prize-winning novelist Schami leapt at the chance to write  a culinary-cultural book on his former home town. There were, however, two seemingly insurmountable barriers - time and geography.
So Schami's sister Marie wandered through Damascus for a year on his behalf, relaying curiosities, sounds, personalities, tastes and the smells of the Old City, while Schami wrote them down, relishing the diverse mark left on Damascene cuisine by its multifarious history.

Also available as a paperback.


'This is a long way from your usual travel guide or cookbook but it encompasses elements of both. Damascus – Taste of a City is, in fact, a phone conversation between brother and sister, he being exiled in Germany and she walking through the streets of their beloved Damascus....'
www.mostlyfood.co.uk

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Rafik Schami was born in Damascus in 1946. He emigrated to Germany in 1971, where he studied Chemistry in Heidelberg. Schami is a prize-winning novelist, and the author of The Dark Side of Love (Arabia Books, 2009), an international bestseller. His works have appeared in 21 languages.