Dear TLS - I was glad to see a review in your latest issue (January 24) by Mona Tabbara , of The Boy From Aleppo Who Painted The War , in your In Brief section. I am the editor and publisher of Sumia Sukkar's debut novel, which is why I was particularly struck by this review. Sukkar's novel is about the Syrian civil war between 2012 and early 2013 - each chapter marks an increasingly terrible moment of escalation, from the cutting of electricity to a final gas attack outside of Damascus. The book, filled with intertextual allusion, features many characters, but the narrator is Adam, a young man on the Autistic Spectrum. Despite the fact that Ms Sukkar is the youngest-ever British Muslim woman to publish a novel - and despite the fact this is a political novel with much to say about terrorism, violence, faith, and art - and also develops a portrait of a very loving Muslim family coping with mental health issues and also wider social struggle - anyway, despite all of th...
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