The Foghorn Echoes by Danny Ramadan

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction 2023
 
Hussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wassim promises Hussam his protection, but ten years into the future, he has failed to keep his promise.

Wassim is on the streets, seeking shelter from both the city and the civil war storming his country. Meanwhile Hussam, now on the other side of the world, remains haunted by his own ghosts, doing his utmost to drown them out with every vice imaginable. Split between war-torn Damascus and unforgiving Vancouver, The Foghorn Echoes is a tragic love story about coping with shared traumatic experience and devastating separation.

As Hussam and Wassim come to terms with the past, they begin to realise the secret that haunts them is not the only secret that formed them.
 
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"Hussam and Wassim will live on in your heart long after the last page. A story of a country torn apart by war and hearts broken by wars within." - Damian Barr
 
"Seldom do we hear stories about members of Syria's queer community told with empathy and nuance, especially in the wake of its civil war. The Foghorn Echoes delivers in spades, but crucially, it's also much more than that and Danny Ramadan's prose is wonderful. This is a heartfelt, compelling tale that should be added on bookshelves everywhere." - Elias Jahshan, editor of This Arab is Queer
 
"'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