Description
A new and revised edition of the novel "Statue of Delma", that won the Sharjah Award for Creativity in 2018.
Nurta, a handsome young man with creative abilities, succeeds in his priesthood studies, and returns to his island, Delma. He then starts thinking of sculpting a large statue of "Sayrora", the goddess of the Gulf and the giver of copper and mangrove, giving Delma a high position in the middle of the sea. However, the hidden religious rebellion inside him and his greed for a position in the temple after years of poverty, did not let him bring out his inner disobedience except in his practice of sculpture, by changing the gaze of "Sayrora", from a gaze "into the far distance" often given to carved gods to a gaze of "direct look of human". His aim was to humanize the idea of God, and thus he continues to transgress in secret and goes as far as placing his signature on the body of the statue.
A novel that takes the reader to the world of the Gulf coasts before religions, from the fall of the Sumerian civilization to the rise of the Akkadian civilization, whose first empire was formed by Sargon of Akkad and extended from southern Iraq, through the Gulf, out of the strait, and reaching the coasts of Majan. What did Nurta do with the statue on his island, in the face of the Akkadian army's violent attack?
Using a well-crafted language, Reem Al Kamali uses her contemplative and abstract texts to describe the prophesier, studious, talented, and disobedient hero in his path, with his internal contradictions in his confrontations with those around him and with "Sayrora" the sculpted goddess that he does not want to leave.