The Foghorn Echoes

By: Danny Ramadan

Narrated by: Danny Ramadan, Hani Mefti, Noor Hamdi

Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

*WINNER OF A 2022 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 BC AND YUKON ETHEL WILSON PRIZE*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 VANCOUVER BOOK AWARD*

"A sweeping and mesmerizing story that spans time and mortal space so expertly and elegantly." —Alan Cumming

A deeply moving novel about a forbidden love between two boys in war-torn Syria and the fallout that ripples through their adult lives.

Syria, 2003. A blooming romance leads to a tragic accident when Hussam’s father catches him acting on his feelings for his best friend, Wassim. In an instant, the course of their lives is changed forever.

Ten years later, Hussam and Wassim are still struggling to find peace and belonging. Sponsored as a refugee by a controlling older man, Hussam is living an openly gay life in Vancouver, where he attempts to quiet his demons with sex, drugs, and alcohol. Wassim is living on the streets of Damascus, having abandoned a wife and child and a charade he could no longer keep up. Taking shelter in a deserted villa, he unearths the previous owner’s buried secrets while reckoning with his own.

The past continues to reverberate through the present as Hussam and Wassim come face to face with heartache, history, drag queens, border guards, and ghosts both literal and figurative.

Masterfully crafted and richly detailed, The Foghorn Echoes is a gripping novel about how to carve out home in the midst of war, and how to move forward when the war is within yourself.

©2022 Danny Ramadan (P)2022 Viking

Critic reviews

*WINNER OF A 2022 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 BC AND YUKON ETHEL WILSON PRIZE*

“The Foghorn Echoes is a deeply moving book about conflict both internal and external, the ways in which cold accidents—of birth, of place, of time—can leave a human being at war with their own desires, their own sense of self. Danny Ramadan is a gifted, sensitive excavator of the things that break people and put them back together, the past as weight and lightness. In this novel he has created a world of immense sensory and emotional precision, at once true in its living details and yet electric with the presence of ghosts.” —Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise

“‘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, author of Baggage

“A heart-wrenching and gorgeous tale that spans across borders and time. Danny Ramadan introduces us to Hussam and Wassim, granting us intimate access to their desires, flaws, secrets, failures, and triumphs. They grapple with the consequences of their identities, attempt to quench their longings and loneliness, and find and make peace within themselves against the backdrop of war, migration, queerness, and the echoes of their particular histories. The Foghorn Echoes is a probing and triumphant story, deftly rendered with depth, compassion, lightness, and joy.” —Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread