Death of a Monk

Aslan Farhi, the son of rich Jewish traders in Damascus, is a youth who longs for men in a strict, father-ruled world. A violent night with an Italian friar, Tommaso, leaves someone dead, and before long the Jews of Damascus are charged with ritual murder, accused of killing the friar so that his blood could be mixed into their Passover bread. The novel imagines its way into the real events of the 1840 affair. Meanwhile Aslan is torn between two enigmatic loves: Mahmud al-Tali, a Christian Arab with yellow hair and blue eyes who leads the hunt for the missing friar, and Umm Jihan, a lovely singer at a pleasure café where the city's idle rich spend their nights. Its Damascus is bright, noisy and sensuous, and also shadowed by suspicion, cruelty and hate.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

250 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Syria, 1840

First published

2004 by Xargol

Author's age

32 when first published

ISBN

9789657120330 (original)

9781843432760 (Harvill Secker, United Kingdom)

9780099490647 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata