Rafik Schami (Arabic: رفيق شامي) (born Suheil Fadel (سهيل فاضل)[1] 23 June 1946) is a Syrian-German author, storyteller and critic.

A distinctive migrant literature began to emerge significantly as a result of both Schami's own writing and his role as a facilitator for other writers.

It takes the form of the diary of a Damascene youth, following his progress through school, work, and family life, and featuring the themes of friendship and first love in a difficult situation of social conflict.

Cultural and religious diversity in Syria is a key theme in the book, for example in the riddle of the "madman", which can only be solved by the co-operation of all the communities in Damascus.

If the fiction set in Syria presents a positive view of Arab family and social structures, it frequently contains critical comment on Damascene politics, on corruption, censorship, issues of civil and human rights.

A Hand Full of Stars is again a good example, charting as it does the growing political awareness of the boy as he discovers journalism as a form of civil resistance.

In interviews and speeches he warns against undercurrents of intolerance but speaks optimistically of the Germans as a people well-placed precisely because of their history to embrace foreign elements.

Similarly the title story of Das Schaf im Wolfpelz (1982; Sheep in Wolf's Clothing) and many others which very obviously contain a social moral could certainly be taken to address the situation in Germany but could be equally applicable in Syria or elsewhere.

The story "Vampire lieben Knoblauch" ("Vampires Love Garlic") in Das Letzte Wort der Wanderratte tells how Günter with his crucifix and Ali with his crescent are equally helpless victims of the predator, Dracula; it is a mistake to seek anti-German polemic in Schami's writing.

His sharpest criticism is directed against the principle of assimilation, with its implication that outsiders settling in Germany should abandon their own cultural identity.

Against the pressure for ethnic minorities to become invisible, Schami champions the concept of a boldly multicultural society, which indeed was the basic ideal of the PoLiKunst movement.

Most of his books are collections of stories, while the novels abound in echoes of the Arabian Nights, even in the titles of Erzähler der Nacht (1989; Damascus Nights) or Der ehrliche Lügner (1992; The Honest Liar), is subtitled: Roman von tausendundeiner Lüge (Novel of 1001 Lies).

Schami began as a child telling stories to his friends on the streets of Damascus, and his promotional appearances are less public readings than free retellings of his works.