'Poet Omar Sakr’s debut novel is a fierce and fantastic force that illuminates the bonds that bind families together as well as what can break them.
'An estranged father. An abused and abusive mother. An army of relatives. A tapestry of violence, woven across generations and geographies, from Turkey to Lebanon to Western Sydney. This is the legacy left to Jamal Smith, a young queer Muslim trying to escape a past in which memory and rumour trace ugly shapes in the dark. When every thread in life constricts instead of connects, how do you find a way to breathe? Torn between faith and fear, gossip and gospel, family and friendship, Jamal must find and test the limits of love.
'In this extraordinary work, Omar Sakr deftly weaves a multifaceted tale brimming with angels and djinn, racist kangaroos and adoring bats, examining with a poet’s eye the destructive impetus of repressed desire and the complexities that make us human.' (Publication summary)
'I try to interrogate my reader bias as often as I can; the questionable motives behind my rage or comfort when reading, how hard and how often I project my own life onto the protagonist, and sometimes even, to my own shame, onto the author. And I wonder how often I am so hungry to read something that does my feelings and my experience justice (knowing full well I’m the only one who can write that), that I start to be frustrated when a book fails to do so. I suppose I’m still working on my book, and a great way to procrastinate is to think about how other people are writing their own books, and all the things they should have done differently. It’s been a safe and reliable distraction. I’m not above it.' (Introduction)
'Towards the end of Son of Sin, the narrator – a now adult Jamal Khaddaj Smith – relates a memory of ‘telling some story of his life’ to friends ‘like Adam or [his housemate] Dan’. His friends respond to his story ‘with mingled disbelief and wonderment, saying, Your life is like a soap opera – because there were too many characters, too much death, nothing at all like the kind of spare, elegant novels they studied in school’. ' (Introduction)
'Ramadan is one month long and its timing follows the lunar calendar. This means that each year, it inches backwards twelve days. My tenth birthday, in September 2006, was on the first day of Ramadan. As I write this opening paragraph, it is April and we’re one week in. Between 2011 and 2018, Ramadan spanned the months of July and August—the northern hemisphere summer holidays.' (Introduction)
'The first thing readers will notice about Son of Sin is the snake coiled across the front cover, its inky scales contrasting with the hot pink background, at once disquieting and strangely beautiful. This striking image sets the tone for the rest of the novel, which is the prose début for Sydney poet and social commentator Omar Sakr. The text provides a disarmingly frank perspective on sexuality, race, and shame in contemporary Australia.' (Introduction)
'A sexual awakening underscores bigger tensions – of faith, racism, tradition and shame – in a tender and candid first novel from the prize-winning poet'
'Son of Sin, the debut novel from writer and poet Omar Sakr, tells the tale of Jamal Smith, a young Arab-Australian growing up in Western Sydney. Sakr’s two poetry collections, These Wild Houses (2017) and The Lost Arabs (2019), were widely admired, and the latter won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award.' (Introduction)
(Introduction)
'It’s a familiar distinction. While guilt is the feeling of having done wrong, shame is the feeling of being wrong, the sense of being defined by some fatal, irredeemable flaw. Understanding shame is one thing, escaping from it something else entirely.' (Publication summary)
'Revisiting ‘terrifying and traumatising’ moments from his own life, the poet’s debut novel Son of Sin explores a young man’s sexual awakening in a conservative migrant community'
Omar Sakr on 'Son of Sin' and Writing Fantasy
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2022
23926979
2022
single work
podcast
interview
'Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses and The Lost Arabs. Son of Sin is his first novel, and in this interview we also find our about his forthcoming poetry collection and a possible fantasy book on the horizon.
'The Lost Arabs won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, and the Colin Roderick Award.
'Omar is a widely published essayist and editor whose work has been translated into Arabic and Spanish. ' (Production abstract)
'Ramadan is one month long and its timing follows the lunar calendar. This means that each year, it inches backwards twelve days. My tenth birthday, in September 2006, was on the first day of Ramadan. As I write this opening paragraph, it is April and we’re one week in. Between 2011 and 2018, Ramadan spanned the months of July and August—the northern hemisphere summer holidays.' (Introduction)
'I try to interrogate my reader bias as often as I can; the questionable motives behind my rage or comfort when reading, how hard and how often I project my own life onto the protagonist, and sometimes even, to my own shame, onto the author. And I wonder how often I am so hungry to read something that does my feelings and my experience justice (knowing full well I’m the only one who can write that), that I start to be frustrated when a book fails to do so. I suppose I’m still working on my book, and a great way to procrastinate is to think about how other people are writing their own books, and all the things they should have done differently. It’s been a safe and reliable distraction. I’m not above it.' (Introduction)
