RÖD GALLA – BILE RED
By Donia Saleh
ONLY THE ELECTROCUNCLUSIVE treatments spare Golan from memories of the mountains, the blood, the men, the mothers. When saliva gathers after the shocks, it is her niece Aya who sits beside her, stroking the back of her hand the same way she does with the elderly in home care. Golan’s daughter Helin has withdrawn, carefully keeping her mother and the chaos she brings at a safe distance. Aya, however, moves closer. She watches her aunt with both terror and fascination – and becomes bound to a love that nourishes and destroys at once.
THE NOVEL MOVES between psychiatric wards and the monotony of everyday life, and the burning terrain of memory. Here are revolution and repression, bodies under pressure, and an emotional codependency whose roots run deep. As Aya presses further into Golan’s life – and into her own solitude – something inside her begins to swell, threatening to burst.
BILE RED IS a fiercely tender and uncompromising political novel that refuses comfort and simplification. With prose that vibrates with precision and urgency, Donia Saleh writes about the limits of love and the violence that travels through bodies, language, and memory. Brutal yet lyrical, the novel does not soothe or excuse, but extends profound understanding to its characters – lingering in the reader’s body long after the final page, as language so radiant it makes the darkness itself glow.
ABOUT THE BOOK
First published by Albert Bonniers, Sweden 2024
RIGHTS SOLD
Sweden, Albert Bonniers
REVIEWS
Donia Saleh has an extraordinary talent for immersing readers in her stories. Suddenly, the story is just there, in every part of you.
– Dagens Nyheter
Saleh’s work captures the subtle acts of kindness that exist within seemingly meaningless conversations between people who struggle to connect in any other way. The author portrays this same care towards the main characters, Aya, Golan, and Helin, none of whom are particularly likeable. However, in Bile Red, Saleh makes it clear that their actions are of unspoken grief.
– Hallands Nyheter
Rarely, have the shifts between love and destruction been depicted so clearly and vividly; How the roots for an emotional co-dependency are vast and buried deep. […] It is a unique talent to be able to write so tenderly about darkness, and hope.
– Aftonbladet
Through her writing, Donia Saleh is creating a refreshing way of approaching the political novel. Unlike modern literature, Saleh’s approach to structure and storytelling is not predictable. […] This is a novel that doesn’t shy away from portraying individuals realistically, and not romanticises, while also managing to show unlimited empathy towards the characters. […] Their memories aren’t flooded with nostalgia or sentiment, it is instead a pounding and living present. It comes to life through the consistent way Saleh speaks to her characters, the lush colloquial manner, and her mastery of the finer points of the literary craft.
– Jönköpings-Posten
To read a novel that is unconfined by anxiety is refreshing, and it makes me wish that more authors wrote as ruthlessly and captivating as Donia Saleh does.
– Flamman
Just like in her debut Ya Leila, Donia Saleh immediately establishes a headstrong and wilful voice that carries the story the whole way through. […] it’s firmly rooted in reality, while becoming suggestively captivating. After all, you want to be there, in Golan and Aya’s chaotic, exploding world that threatens to expand beyond all borders, simply because Donia Saleh makes it so painfully and intensively alive.
– Svenska Dagbladet
Donia Saleh strengthened her position as a storyteller with Bile Red. The stunning portraits she has created of the two main characters, Aya and her aunt Golan, clearly place her amongst the créme de la créme of Swedish authors in our modern age.
– Västerbottens-Kuriren
How can I be this ecstatic about the fact that an author can write? Shouldn’t that be a given? Unfortunately, not. […] Therefore, I was immensely happy to spend time in Donia Saleh’s universe, despite the topic at hand in her new novel Bile Red. […] Saleh fires up a spark of life in her characters and their meager lives, and even I feel it when reading, simply by the language she uses. When the words refine reality to a hyper precision even the everyday struggles turn fascinating.
– Ystad Allehanda
What responsibility do you have for your next of kin? For yourself, and your actions? […] In a time of almost pathological self-awareness, where we’re pushing the limit of toxic positivity about ‘knowing one’s worth’ and a ‘take no shit’ mentality, the discussion is worth having. With Bile Red, Donia Saleh proves that a novel is still a place where those conversations can begin.
– Sydsvenskan
We can do nothing but wait and see what Saleh’s next masterpiece will be.
– KULT Magasin
In her intense, artsy, and poetic language, with a clear pitch for social criticism […], Donia Saleh writes a story where pain is passed through generations, with the mother’s milk, and no one can be freed from the other’s darkness, despite keeping a physical distance and leaving messages unanswered.
– Dagens ETC
We’re all in one way or the other trapped in our loneliness, and all attempts to save one another seem to fail. The contrast to this is Saleh’s language, so incandescent that the story itself is backlit. Even if I only manage to brush against the story that’s depicted, I can feel the energy radiating from the narrator, the erupting volcano, which takes over all – and makes it vibrate through and through.
– Upsala Nya Tidning
Donia Saleh is a trickster when it comes to storytelling and linguistics.
– Expressen
It’s a poetic and intense novel about what happens when one’s struggles and suffering pour over onto loved ones. […] Overall Saleh doesn’t shy away from depicting the dingy aspects of being ill. In dying and living. Therefore, Bile Red is a much-needed counter-weight to more casual depictions of trauma and mental illness.
– Lundagård
The structure of the novel immerses you in Aya’s innermost thoughts and emotions. You are forced to confront every aspect of Aya and Golan’s lives, without the ability to turn away. It’s an intense read that demands your full attention, but the effort is definitely worth it.
– BTJ
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