The little girl who clings to the hand of her monster, who will not let go of her before she leaves Beirut. The memory will return her relentlessly to the father and to the city, in a deaf dialogue between her voice and his. Residency, as well as departure, has no words that do not reach the desolation of distant balconies, where in Beirut or in Paris, the harmful weeds grow, those lonely and free ones that grow contrary to the movement of time, and in the wretched place with limitless violence, and in a foreignness that we carry wherever the winds of our destinies scatter...

ديمة عبداللَّه: من مواليد بيروت 1977، تعيش في فرنسا منذ 1989. «أعشاب ضارّة» هي روايتها الأولى، وقد حصدت جوائز أدبيَّة رفيعة وحازت على اهتمامٍ نقديٍّ واسع.