E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

MS SUMIA SUKKAR For Immediate Release B7 Media secures film and television rights to Sumia Sukkar’s acclaimed novel of Syrian conflict   – The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War follows B7 Media’s successful BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of a modern literary masterpiece –   London, 6 July 2015 :   The film and television rights to The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War , the debut novel by Sumia Sukkar set during the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, have been acquired by B7 Media.   Independent production and distribution company B7 Media has announced it has acquired an option to develop a motion picture or television serial based on Sumia Sukkar’s acclaimed debut novel of the Syrian conflict, The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War .   Following B7’s critically acclaimed radio dramatisation of the novel for BBC Radio 4 in 2014, featuring Farshid Rokey, this new film adaptation will look to explore this powerful and...

This review first appeared on the international e-zine Various Artists Review: The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the War by Sumia Sukkar (Eyewear Publishing, 2013)   With its relentless accumulations of violence and random atrocity, it’s tempting to think that, from time to time, Sumia Sukkar is pushing at the bounds of plausibility in this, her debut novel. Even the briefest of surveys of the video footage which continues to emerge from the conflict in Syria, however, suggests that the mutilations, torture, street executions and other horrors described and/or alluded to in the narrative are no exaggeration. As we are reminded throughout, in fact, the tragedies endured by the main characters constitute only part of a much larger story in which an entire country is being torn apart for reasons which, to many, remain chillingly unclear. The central narrative of The Boy from Aleppo… , then, revolves around and is, for the most part, narrated by the eponymous boy: a ...

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...

Dear friend of Eyewear Blog and Publishing,   I am writing this post to ask you to consider attending an extremely important milestone event for us as a press. Eyewear Publishing is now two years old, and we are moving into prose publishing now, as well as poetry.   In 2014, this means more novels, memoirs, and critical essays, as well as ten new poetry collections. As the TLS recently noted in a review, we publish stylish books.  We are open to poets, poetries, and poetics, across a wide international spectrum.   A healthy Eyewear press is good for poetry and publishing in Britain and beyond. However, in order for any small press to survive, it needs readers, and, by extension, purchasers of its books.   Our move into prose is motivated by a love of good prose – but also a realistic awareness that prose reaches a potentially wider readership: one that can underwrite and sustain our growing and frankly exciting poetry list. ...