Amman, February 4 – The Abdul Hameed Shoman Cultural Forum hosted the launch of Dr. Shahla Al-Ajaili’s latest novel, Hanna Diab’s Room, on Monday evening, welcoming writers, intellectuals, and academics. The event was chaired by Dr. Roua Al-Hawamdeh, with literary commentary provided by Dr. Ghassan Abdul Khaleq.
In her new work, Dr. Al-Ajaili delivers a richly layered narrative that explores the art of storytelling and the role of the narrator, giving voice to a figure long marginalized in literary history. The novel interweaves memory, journey, and the search for meaning, presented in a poetic and intellectually nuanced style that transcends time and place.
Set in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Hanna Diab’s Room blends literary imagination, cultural reflection, and critique. The city itself becomes a vivid, symbolic landscape, reflecting both its material and spiritual history. The novel raises questions about memory, narrative, and identity, bringing to life Hanna Diab as a forgotten narrator from One Thousand and One Nights, in a story where history, imagination, self, and other converge.
Dr. Abdul Khaleq highlighted Dr. Al-Ajaili’s engagement with feminist literature and postcolonial critique. He noted that her upbringing in an educated, aristocratic family in Al-Raqqa, her studies in cosmopolitan Aleppo, her work with international humanitarian and crisis organizations, and her university teaching have given her a unique perspective. This experience enables her to weave past and present seamlessly, balancing intellectual depth with narrative style, while capturing the complex interplay of life, society, and human experience.
He also noted the novel’s rich historical detail, layered feminist perspective, and postcolonial awareness, emphasizing women’s experiences in times of war and crisis and the ways history repeats itself with new actors and roles.
Dr. Al-Ajaili shared insights into her writing process, including the historical contexts and themes central to the novel, and read excerpts for the audience. Dr. Roua Al-Hawamdeh remarked, “Through Shahla’s eyes, we enter Hanna Diab’s room and, through it, see Aleppo in all its alleys and streets. This work is not merely artistic documentation, it is a reclamation of memory, giving voice to what has long been silenced.”
Dr. Shahla Al-Ajaili is a professor of modern literature and cultural studies at the American University of Madaba and one of the leading contemporary Arab literary voices. She holds a PhD in modern literary criticism and has published novels, short story collections, and critical studies celebrated for their intellectual depth, linguistic beauty, and engagement with history, storytelling, and identity.
She has lectured at prestigious international universities, including Harvard University, Georgetown University, and Cornell University. Her novel A Sky Close to Our House was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2015, and her novel Summer with the Enemy was shortlisted for the IPAF in 2019. Her novel Ayn al-Hurr won the Jordanian State Prize in Literature in 2010, and her short story collection The King’s Daughter’s Bed received the Al-Multaqa Prize (American University of Kuwait) in 2017, the highest Arab award for short stories. She was also shortlisted for the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in London in 2021. Most recently, she published her novel Hanna Diab’s Room in 2025.