A Land of Ink

About this book

(A land of ink.. where souls dwell between the lines.) Have you ever wondered whether the books we read are mere deaf papers, or breaths imprisoned for a long time awaiting whoever frees them? In the novel "A Land of Ink," we meet "Sereen," the girl loneliness polished and made of her eyes a mirror for a life not yet lived. She works as a waitress in Cairo's bustling crowd, but her heart hangs in a "magic cave" owned by Uncle Kamel, that man who did not sell books, but guarded stories' gates. Sereen's life turns upside down when she receives "a dusty wooden box" containing an empty book, an old feather, and ink unlike the ink we know. In a moment of fracture and loss, Sereen finds herself having crossed "the bridge of words" to wake in a place called "the Land of the Sorrowful"; where the sky is gray and the soil muddy with the departed's tears. There she meets "Salim," "Lana," and the child "Jad," and discovers that grief is no mere feeling, but a passage ticket to a world ruled by the heart's law not the mind's. Sara Radwan Shaker takes us on a surreal journey accelerating when Sereen discovers that everything she records in that mysterious book turns into a truth swallowing her, from the sea's depths and its mermaids to coral palaces, in a bitter struggle between the desire to survive and return to her world, and the magic of living in "the Land of Ink." It is a novel about loss and recovery, about betrayal and faithfulness, and about that necklace protecting the soul when everyone fails it. Is the book her savior or her eternal prison? The answer lies in the ink drops Sereen bled on those white pages.