This novel is a vibrant, historical echo of both Lebanon and women’s narratives, spanning the 20th century up until the year 1982. It is written in a style that is simultaneously psychological, critical, and poetic, and it touches us directly.

– Diffah Thalitha

[The novel has] an epic quality, tracing the fates of its characters both within their individual lives and the collective history to which they belong.

– Al-Quds Al-Araby

Humaydan scripts an authentic narrative that transcends fixed gender binaries and delves deeply into the repression, exclusions, and marginalization in societal and cultural consciousness. The novel embraces feminine origins, the unconditional giving of Mother Nature that plays a symbolic role as a source of generosity, creation, renewal, and continuity in the face of annihilation and oblivion.

– The Independent (Arabic)

Iman Humaydan tells the stories of the women in one family as a way of narrating the story of a nation. Her narrative is built on paradoxes that begin

with the title itself: how can one sing to darkness, oppression, loss, and defeat? The title Songs for the Darkness is a mirror of contradictions within society, especially in Beirut, a city that sings in the depths of its own collapse and dances even as it is being bombed.

– Al-Majalla

Songs for Darkness is a testament to Humayda's ability to breathe such vivid life into characters that readers feel as if they personally know them.

– Literatur

“Four generations of Lebanese women, their lives spanning the 20th century, show a different side of that war-torn nation’s story … An affecting portrait of women’s lives both in cosmopolitan Beirut and in rustic mountain towns.”

– Kirkus Reviews