The subject might be interesting, but the book is badly written. Lots of repetition and awkward exposition. I gave up halfway. ( )

A kafka-esque novel/parable about a dictatorship and the difficulty of thinking for oneself when "The Leader" reigns absolutely supreme--and with tight reins! The author is Syrian, describing what's happening in his homeland. ( )

In the afterword of this book, Nihad Sirees, asks “Is it possible for the silence and the roar to co-exist?” Going on to state that The answer is most certainly yes, that in countries ruled by people obsessed with supremacy, authoritarians and those who are crazed by power, the ruler or leader imposes silence upon all those who dare to think outside the prevailing norm. Silence can be the muffling of one’s voice or the banning of one’s publication, or it can be the silence of a prison cell… or the grave.

The roar afflicts Fathi, the protagonist of this book from the moment he wakes and follows him throughout his day, it is in the voice of the hordes chanting their support in some spontaneously orchestrated marches celebrating the leader, it’s the leader, or his underlings, calling from the Television and the Radio and the TV crews filming it all for the leader to watch at his pleasure. It’s in the casting aside of classical Arabic music and replacing it with martial sounds. It is also in the stomp of the boot as it comes crashing down upon some individual deemed a traitor for not marching.

Silence can also be wisdom when all talk is praise for the Leader, as Fathi’s girlfriend says as he lays in her arms relishing the quiet sanctuary of their love.

The Silence and the Roar follows Fathi, a writer no longer allowed to write, as he makes his way across town to visit his girlfriend and his mother on the twentieth anniversary of some undisclosed leader. Along the way he meets various characters all trying to make sense of the chaos. Fathi, although silenced, still seems to command respect and this doesn’t sit well with the leader or his cronies.

It seems that Fathi’s own silence is not enough, the government wants more. They want total acquiescence, they want his unconditional and public approval and are quite happy to use any means or anyone to get it…

At one point Fathi describes all that is going on in his country as surrealist, but you quickly realise that farce is just as accurate a description of the world contained within the pages of this book. Somehow Nihad Sirees, has taken all the horror, anger, injustice and sheer terror of a brutal regime and created this slight, slender novel that is funny, in fact totally hilarious, although the anger is still there, still burning.

It says on the back cover that “ The Silence and the Roar is a personal, urgent funny and aggrieved novel. It asks what it means to have a conscience, or to laugh, or to endure in a time of violence, strangeness and roar of tyranny. This is a true statement and one that the writer is constantly seeking to answer, in the afterword, in the last passage Nihad, states that..

“There is another kind of roar that this author never thought the leader would ever be capable of using: the roar of artillery, tanks, and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities. The leader is levelling cities and using lethal force against his own people in order to hold on to power. We must ask, alongside the characters in this novel: what kind of Surrealism is this?”

http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-silence-and-roar-nihad-sirees.h... ( )

"The Silence & The Roar" makes for tough reading--in all the right ways. It shares certain features with many of the classic examples of literature under oppression, from the persistent nature of surveillance to the arbitrariness of government officials to attempts to compromise the integrity of the protagonist. But Sirhees places his story in what is clearly a Ba'athist environment, a hot and sweaty country struggling with secular and religious forces right alongside the challenges of dictatorship. It is a compelling read, and the afterword is touching. ( )