Fiction — The Book Roads

The hostage

Zayd Muṭīʻ Dammāj

Set in Yemen in the 1940s, before the revolution that ended the country’s imamate system, The Hostage follows an unnamed adolescent boy who is taken from his family and held as a hostage to guarantee his father’s political loyalty to the ruling Imam. Transferred to the governor’s palace in Taiz, he becomes a young attendant serving the palace’s inhabitants, gradually discovering the complex relationships, privileges, and abuses that shape their world. Through the boy’s experiences, Dammaj exposes the cruelty of an authoritarian political system in which ordinary people are denied autonomy and treated as instruments of power. As the protagonist develops emotionally and becomes increasingly aware of his circumstances, his desire for independence grows. Blending personal coming-of-age with political satire, the novel offers a powerful portrait of oppression, social hierarchy, and the human longing for freedom. First published in Arabic as Al-Rahina, it is considered a landmark of modern Yemeni literature.

Yemen 1984