Maturation Beneath the Scream

About this book

Is adolescence really a period of recklessness and chaos, or is it the moment a human being screams in order to be born anew? This is not merely a novel; it is an honest and amazing mirror of the condition of "the adolescent creature" who finds himself stuck between two stages: a childhood he turned his back on, and a manhood or womanhood whose keys he has not yet received. In an enchanting literary mold, with an authentic Gulf pulse and a language blending classical Arabic with the ease of daily life, writer Emad Al-Abidan takes us into the confusing depths of the soul of the young man Fares, and with him a band of friends whose hearts and minds flounder between the great questions and the sarcastic details. You will live, between the pages of this warm human work, a state of beautiful contradiction. You will laugh out loud — perhaps to the point of tears — at Fares's situations with his mother, who has turned into a "moving tracking device" reading love in his facial expressions, and at his flustered silence before his father, the "silent language of manhood" who sees feelings as weakness and calm as wisdom. These are realistic, painful stories that touch every home and every family, placing parents face to face with the storm they once lived through and forgot.