Hayat Sharara
Syracuse University Press
15 March 2027
262
eBook - PDF
Literary Fiction
ARC via Edelweiss
Set on a Baghdad university campus in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, When Darkness Falls unfolds across a single spring semester in the life of Dr. Nouman Mahmood, an aging professor who dreams of only one thing: retirement. Once a young idealist drawn to movements promising social justice and democracy, Nouman now navigates a world governed by surveillance, suspicion, and fear. His application for early retirement is a quiet act of desperation, an attempt to preserve his dignity even at the cost of financial ruin under crushing UN sanctions. But approval is far from certain, and the waiting becomes its own form of torment.
Through Nouman’s eyes, Hayat Sharara renders the texture of everyday life under Saddam Hussein’s regime with unflinching precision. Here, arriving a few minutes late can trigger an investigation. “Students of special admission” report on their professors. Security forms demand accounts of relatives’ political sympathies. Colleagues who fall out of favor vanish from their posts, accused of treason.
In 1997, two months after completing this novel, Sharara took her own life. What she left behind is a haunting testament to life under authoritarian rule—a work hailed in the Arabic press as a masterpiece of political witness, now available in English for the first time.
When Darkness Falls offered a stark account of everyday life under a dictatorship where professors were forced to give pass marks to failing students who were only in attendance as spies for the government and where they had to queue in the heat to be weighed because the regime had decided teachers had to meet certain health criteria. In some ways this was a 'quiet' book without a lot of big moments and no exact beginning, middle and end. Rather, it was a snapshot of life and difficulties the citizens faced, the constant fear and yet the resistance to how they were being forced to act. It was certainly an eye-opening read and I am giving it 4.5 stars. Recommended for readers who like profound works grounded in realities lived.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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