British writer Summia Sukar’s story of war and paint in Syria

We speak to the British writer Sumia Sukkar about her horribly beautiful debut novel, The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the War.

The author Sumia Sukkar's The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the War is a novel about Syria's continuing tragedy. Delores Johnson / The National

“I have the urge to paint and I can already see the painting in my head. Two young boys lying in the water with their bodies spread open, free, but their faces disfigured, burnt. It would be a black-and-white painting with the faces a spectrum of colours. It’s going to be horrible and beautiful all at the same time.”

These are the words of Adam, the narrator of The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War, the powerful debut novel of British writer Sumia Sukkar.

A 14-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, Adam struggles to comprehend the country’s intensifying civil war and its devastating affect on his family and the wider neighbourhood. A talented artist, he uses colours to describe the emotions of those around him, channeling his feelings and thoughts by painting them.

“Horrible and beautiful all at the same time” is an apt description of Adam’s story, which neatly captures his innocence and artistic sense of wonder, as well as his relationships with his family, above all his beloved older sister Yasmine.

Set against such a backdrop, the deaths, kidnapping and displacement experienced by the family are all the more devastating.

Sukkar, who is of Syrian and Algerian descent, made the narrator of the story a child to intensify the story’s impact.

“I really wanted to convey the raw and vulgar state that Syria is in,” she says. “There’s always the temptation to sugarcoat what’s going on, but I really wanted to pull back the curtain and really give it to the reader in a raw way.”

Sukkar, who moved to Abu Dhabi last year, drew on first hand experiences of family members and friends living in Syria for the book, which began life when she was studying for a degree in creative writing at Kingston University in the UK.

“I was in constant contact with my aunt in Damascus over Skype while I was writing the book,” she said. “She kept telling me terrible stories of incidents that she’d witnessed. We also have family in Deraa, where so many tragedies have occurred.”

Her creative writing teacher was so impressed with what she had written that he secured her a publishing deal, almost unheard of for such a young writer. The resulting book had its official launch in London the day after her graduation ceremony last autumn.

Sukkar is still overwhelmed at being a published author at such a young age – 22. “It’s always been my dream to be a writer and subconsciously I always knew that I would get to this point. However, I never dreamed that it would be so soon!”

The book has had a largely positive impact in the UK, and is due to be dramatised as a radio play by the BBC later this year.

“Originally in my head Adam started off as a normal child,” she says, “but I wanted to give him more of an edge as a narrator.

“Later I met the brother of a friend who had Asperger’s syndrome, and I thought: ‘That’s it!’ and it developed from there.”

The choice of a young narrator with Asperger's syndrome inevitably invites comparison with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon's Whitbread Prize-winning novel of 2003.

Sukkar says she only came across Haddon’s book at a late stage in the writing process and is keen to play down the similarities between them. “I can see how people would perhaps put the two books together, but at the end of the day they’re very different books,” she says.

"Reading the book did raise one or two ideas, but much of it was stuff that I'd already learnt from meeting people with Asperger's syndrome, doing research with Asperger's foundations and watching documentaries and movies that dealt with the subject." Sukkar cites the 2009 movie Adam, starring Hugh Dancy as an Asperger's sufferer with a passion for space exploration, as a greater influence on the novel's central character.

While the subjects of the movie and Sukkar’s book share the same name, ultimately she chose “Adam” for its universal connotations, as a name used by all three Abrahamic faiths and a wide variety of cultures.

When asked for her opinion on Syria’s prospects, Sukkar is not optimistic, given the daily stories of death, kidnapping and displacement emanating from the country, not to mention the farce of recent presidential elections.

Despite such grounds for despair, however, the resilience of Syria’s people in the face of unimaginable horrors ultimately gives her hope for the country’s future. “The people still have a strong religious sense, fasting, praying their daily prayers, and ultimately trusting in God and hoping for a better future. There’s still a fundamental goodness in the people despite all that’s happened to them.”

John Everington is a business reporter for The National.