In his tranquil middle-class neighbourhood, eighteen-year-old Hisham doesn't quite fit in. He's a budding philosopher who spends his days reading banned books and developing his political ideals. His Saudi Arabia is a nation embroiled in internal conflict, torn between ancient tradition and newfound prosperity. Hisham finds himself caught up in the struggle for change, devoting more and more of his time to a shadowy group of dissenters even as he questions both their motives and methods. The result is an intense showdown between Hisham's love for his family, his firmly held beliefs and his yearning for social justice. He awakens to passions both private and political, coming to grips with the paradoxes of a conservative land where illicit pleasures co-exist with the apparatus of a merciless state.

The year is 1970, a period of crisis in the Arab world. Twenty-year-old Hisham has left home for the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, where he’s enrolled at university to study politics and economics. But this city has more than academic qualifications to offer a man of Hisham’s mettle, and he soon discovers a strange underworld of alcohol and prostitution where fear, pleasure and politics merge. Here hospitals prove the richest cruising grounds; the desert is the place for illicit couplings; and now Hisham is spying on the bedroom activities of his next-door neighbour’s wife, who has taken to leaving her door ajar. Meanwhile, Hisham’s disillusioned childhood friend Adnan abandons his artistic ambitions in favour of a loftier cause – Islam. The two friends – who rapidly grow estranged – come to symbolise the opposite extremes of life in a repressive closed society. But their shared past soon conspires to reunite them in a new and terrifying way. Turki al-Hamad is a highly successful author in the Arab world. His novels are controversial throughout the Middle East; he is the target of four fatwas (religious edicts) claiming his life. This is the second volume in his explosive Saudi coming-of-age trilogy. The first, Adama, was published by Saqi Books in 2003. The author continues to live in Riyadh and teaches at the American University in Beirut.

السلسلة: أطياف الأزقة المهجورة. \—- تصل المأساة الميتافيزيقية لهشام العابر إلى قمتها في هذا الجزء. ففي جدة, يختلي بنفسه, ويتيح له السجن فرصة للقيام برحلة ذاتية منفردة إلى داخله, بعيدًا عن مثاليات الدمام واندفاعات الرياض إنه وحيد الآن, وفي هذه الوحدة يكتشف مالم يكن من الممكن اكتشافه عندما كان خاضعًا لمثاليات أمه وصرامة التنظيم الحزبي في الدمام, وعندما كان غارقًا في حياة الجسد في الرياض. لقد انهارت كل المثاليات, وفقدت كل لذتها, فما الذي بقى؟ الكراديب هي خاتمة الرحلة الذاتية لابن العابر, في مرحلة هي ذاتها ضائعة بين مرحلتين. وربما كانت الخاتمة هي البداية, فما الخاتمة والبداية إلا أسماء سميناها! انتهت السلسلة التي اختمرت 16 عاماً في عقل الكاتب حتى اخرجها بهذه الصورة العجبية