The Inspirations Behind My Work – Q&A on What Fuels My Storycraft
Q: So, What are the Inspirations that Shaped Siwar Al Assad’s Novels?
A: Ah, you ask such a simple question with a world behind it. If I name them, cultural grief, exile, love, memory, you’ll nod. But the reality is these inspirations that shaped Siwar Al Assad’s novels come from small details: the scent of orange blossoms in Homs, a stray poem, the echo of laughter in a Damascus courtyard that doesn’t exist anymore.
I’ve carried these fragments in my work, whether in A Coeur Perdu and Guard Thy Heart, where memory haunts the heart, or Damascus Has Fallen, where simple choices in chaos whisper of deeper truths.
Q: Can You Give A Concrete Moment That Shaped One Of Your Books?
A: During a visit to Palmyra, my childhood rose with the ruins clinging to memory. That ache became Palmyre pour toujours, one of the clearest examples where inspirations emerged from cultural mourning and tender resistance.
Q: What Inspired Your Romantic Thrillers Like Guard Thy Heart?
A: It began with a conversation, someone whispered, “How much of me survives when my heart belongs to someone else?” That question, of identity and intimacy, planted the seed for Guard Thy Heart (the English version of A Coeur Perdu), where a heart transplant becomes a metaphor for longing and truth.
Q: How Has Displacement Influenced Your Storytelling?
A: Displacement reshapes perception. The geography of home becomes horizontal and vertical at once in exile, memory, language, and longing, all layered. That’s why my novels often involve fractured timelines, longing protagonists, and landscapes both remembered and imagined.
Q: Are There Specific Writers Or Works That Inspired Your Voice?
A: Absolutely. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih taught me how colonial displacement can be haunted yet beautiful. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables showed me the sweep of moral redemption. Nizar Qabbani’s poetry leaned into resistance with tenderness. Together, they form part of the constellation of inspirations that shaped my novels.
Q: So, What Ties It All Together?
A: Hope. Even when hope seems lost. All of these inspirations, memory, exile, love, historical scars, and poetry are caught in search. My stories don’t end in despair. They end in the act of naming what we cannot afford to forget.
Those are the wellsprings from which my novels flow. Small truths, personal losses, questions about identity, they’re the compass guiding every page I write.