Dublin-based Syrian writer Suad Aldarra has been awarded this year’s Rooney Prize for Literature. Each year the Prize is awarded to an Irish writer under forty for an “outstanding body of work”. Established in 1976 by Dr Daniel Rooney, the Prize has been renowned as one of the most prestigious Irish literary awards. It is currently administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre for Creative Writing in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, with its winners receiving a grant of 10,000 euros.
Aldarra’s debut a memoir titled I Don’t Want To Talk About Home came out in 2022 and came as a result of Aldarra wanting to change the narrative about Syria and become “in control of the story”. Spending her childhood in Saudi Arabia, Aldarra decided to study software engineering at Damascus University, hoping to regain a sense of freedom in her native land. However, her situation changed drastically after the beginning of the war.
The plot focuses on Aldarra’s journey from fleeing a war-torn Syria with her husband, a Palestinian-Syrian refugee himself, in 2012 her subsequent arrival in Ireland on a working visa and how her new status as an asylum seeker and refugee changed every aspect of her life. I Don’t Want To Talk About Home further explores Aldarra’s arrival in Ireland, describing the struggles of a lost homeland and feelings of belonging as well as the Syrian community in Ireland.
“It’s about the enduring love for a home that ceased to exist, building a life out of the rubble, and the parts of yourself you lose and find when integrating into a new world.”
Aldarra’s memoir received glowing reviews, with The Sunday Times calling it “an instantly gripping memoir by a Syrian migrant in Ireland about displacement, suppressed trauma and, above all, love”.
In addition to her writing, Aldarra has won the Techfugees Global Challenge in 2018 for her project RefugeesAre, a website which compiles and publishes data about the narrative presented about refugees and migrants in the news. The project is built on her previous master’s thesis which was concerned with detecting hate speech in news articles.
