The Foghorn Echoes

Hussam and Wassim are teenaged boys living in Syria during America's invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wassim promises Hussam his protection, but ten years into the future, he has failed to keep his promise. Wassim is on the streets, seeking shelter from both the city and the civil war storming his country. Meanwhile, Hussam, now on the other side of the world, remains haunted by his own ghosts, doing his utmost to drown them out with every vice imaginable.

Split between war-torn Damascus and Vancouver, The Foghorn Echoes is a tragic love story about coping with shared traumatic experience and devastating separation. As Hussam and Wassim come to terms with the past, they begin to realise the secret that haunts them is not the only secret that formed them.

"Treat your thoughts like hurt children. They haven't learned yet how to handle pain." So says a wise ghost in Danny Ramadan's sweeping and mesmerising story that spans time and mortal space so expertly and elegantly. This is a beautiful novel, written by a once hurt child and loved and deeply admired by another, me. - Alan Cumming