Clothesline Swing
A multi-award-winning tale of love and courage, picked by the Independent as one of the 30 Best Debut Novels of 2019.
Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, Ahmad Danny Ramadan’s innovative and poetic debut novel tells the story of two lovers anchored to the memory of a dying Syria. One is Hakawati, the storyteller, keeping life in forward motion by relaying remembered fables and incidents from their youth to his dying partner. Each night he spins stories of a Damascus childhood, of leaving home, of persecution and hardship, and of his fated meeting with his lover. Meanwhile, Death himself, in his dark cloak, shares the house with the two men, eavesdropping on their secrets as he awaits their final undoing.
Ahmad Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker, storyteller and an LGBTQ-refugee activist.
The Clothesline Swing was published to acclaim in Canada in 2017, winning the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for LGBT Fiction among numerous other accolades, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Lambda Award for Gay Fiction.