Writer and translator Khalaf Sarhan Al-Qurashi has published a new novel entitled: "Shahryar," from Dar Takween for Printing and Publishing in Jeddah, 2022 AD. 

The novel is inspired by the atmosphere and worlds of (One Thousand and One Nights) and Scheherazade''s stories to Shahryar, amidst strange spaces with which the novel begins and ends, related to fantasies of time and other worlds. The genie appears to the protanist and asks him to evoke Shahryar to ask him a question that has haunted him for a long time, which is that Shahryar was always silent and was only a listener to Scheherazade''s stories and did not speak with her.

According to this eccentricity, the novel revolves between travel, presence and absence, recalling the past and paradoxical signs for the current moment. Shahryar is present as a mask to read the manifestations of the present. 

From the novel''s atmosphere: "I headed to a cafe not far from Tariq''s restaurant, ordered coffee, and took a newspaper that was lying there. I noticed that it had a cultural supplement. It was a strange coincidence that I found in it a long article exploring the depths of the One Thousand and One Nights story, which its writer included a quote by the poet Nizar Qabbani in which he says: ... and I would like to admit that my poetry presented me to people as dangerous, and colored my reputation in bright red and helped establish my (Shahryar) image in their heads. Shahryar in my view is innocent of all the crimes attributed to him, and he has the right to demand his retrial and his rehabilitation, and when he is retried in the twentieth century, in the light of psychology, it will turn out that the man was not a killer, but rather was forced to kill out of boredom... Shahryar was an artist and a human being, and... this is the important point in his character, a one-sided view in love, he was looking in his depths for one woman who loves him for himself. I photographed that quote with my mobile phone, hoping to find an opportunity one day to ask Shahryar about it." 

Khalaf Al-Qurashi is a translator and author who has published: (The Tired Road), a collection of short stories translated from English, and (And Women Said) and (Inspired by Surah Al-Kahf: Reflections and Visions) and (Between the Watering and the Measure: Reflections and Visions Inspired by Surah Yusuf) and (My Mother Breastfeeding a Scorpion: Memories of a Child from the Time of od People - Autobiography).