Books in the The Pride List series

A rare narrative of gay love in the Arab world that travels into the lives of a group of spirited youth during the Syrian Revolution.   Youssef's mother has always told him that he is named after the biblical prophet Joseph who had the power of foresight. But when Youssef participated in the first demonstration in Damascus in 2011, he felt that the uprising against the Bashar al-Assad regime after forty years of silence and fear was "a miracle more powerful than that of the prophet."   While Josephine, a charming young Alawite, gathers in her home a group of youth to fight for their visions of a promising future, a forbidden love story unfolds between two men, Youssef and Mohammad. Meanwhile, young Khalid's love for Josephine is brutally interrupted by the agents of the oppressive regime. Homosexuality clashes with tradition, emancipation with persecution, and feelings with loyalties, leading to an upheaval that sweeps away the destinies of the young as well as that of an entire nation.   Omar Youssef Souleimane's eloquent novel is not only a narrative of the Syrian Revolution; it is also a story about inter-generational conflicts, rebellion, and liberation. With intense, poetic prose, he brilliantly captures the indomitable yearning for freedom that, despite all obstacles and setbacks, always survives in a hopeful person's heart until it's attained.

A metafictional novel about two intertwined stories of love that seek to perpetuate themselves in history. The Worst Thing of All Is the Light tells two stories. First, that of the friendship of two heterosexual men, Koldo and Edorta, through the decades of the late twentieth century in Spain‿s Basque Country. In the book Edorta writes in order to try and save from oblivion his relationship with Koldo‿a bond for which the word “friendshipâ€? falls short yet for which he is too afraid to use the word “love.â€? It is the story of two men who are in love and don‿t know it, or don‿t want to know it. The second story is that of its author, José Luis Serrano, in the present day as he enjoys his summer holiday in the same Basque Country and talks with his husband at length about many different things, but mostly about how to narrate the relationship of Koldo and Edorta, two men who did not allow themselves to construct the domestic life that their counterparts enjoy today. Together these stories show a love that the lovers hope will outlive them, a love that is the same even if we give it different labels.