The Frightened Ones A novel

**Finalist for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction**

A timely and haunting novel from an exciting new voice in international literature, set in present-day Syria

In her therapist's waiting room in Damascus, Suleima meets a strange and reticent man named Naseem, and they soon begin a tense affair. But when Naseem, a writer, flees Syria for Germany, he sends Suleima the unfinished manuscript of his novel. To Suleima's surprise, she and the novel's protagonist are uncannily similar. As she reads, Suleima's past overwhelms her and she has no idea what to trust--Naseem's pages, her own memory, or nothing at all?
Narrated in alternating chapters by Suleima and the mysterious woman portrayed in Naseem's novel, The Frightened Ones is a boundary-blurring, radical examination of the effects of oppression on one's sense of identity, the effects of collective trauma, and a moving window into life inside Assad's Syria.

DIMA WANNOUS is a Syrian writer and translator who studied French literature at Damascus University and the Sorbonne. The Frightened Ones is her first work to be published in English. She is also the author of a short-story collection, Details (2007), and the novel The Chair (2008). She was named as one of the "Beirut 39," a group of top Arab writers under the age of forty.