The City of Chalk

About this book

Time's struggle in the city of chalk. Have you ever wondered what happens when time's hands break on history's edge? In "The City of Chalk," writer Hisham El-Barawi takes us to worlds recognizing no borders separating past from future, where kingdoms are born from rebellion's womb, and perish under absence's weight. The tale begins from remote "Yasweel" island in 1914, where a prisoners' ship turned into the cradle of the great kingdom of "Nebo"; that "paradise" built on injustice's ruins, but remaining haunted by the riddle of its founder king's disappearance. And as days unravel, we move between "Asheel" state's alleys in 1945, where "Hatem" finds an appeal letter trapped in a bottle, written in blood decades ago, yet its writer still pulses with fear as if time had stopped for her at that moment. Between priests' dark tombs and royal intelligence corridors, and between "Yasweel Gate" and "the Chalk Gate" lying under old Gaza's rubble, fate tangles. Can a girl remain eighteen years old for more than twenty years? And what is the secret linking kingdoms' fall to Old Testament prophecies? "The City of Chalk" is no mere science-fiction or historical novel, but a deep human journey searching for truth and justice, amid a world oscillating between science's light and priestcraft's darkness. It is the story of those who dare to dream of restoring light when everyone drowns in darkness, where wars are settled by a light promised to us since eternity.