n 1907, in the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, a flood sweeps away the pleasant life which had existed on both sides of its banks. Close friends Hanna and Zakaria are in a castle enjoying worldly pleasures and are saved. Hanna’s wife and child, and Zakaria’s son are not. Nothing is the same after the flood. Hanna enters a monastery and contemplates the meaning of life and death. These small lives are pictured against a backdrop of the wider destiny of Aleppo, a city which has endured floods, earthquakes and famines, and has absorbed deep social, political and religious changes. The novel follows these changes, threaded throughout by the dichotomy of love and death. Minder