Zakaria Tamer (Arabic: زكريا تامر, romanized: Zakariyyā Tāmir; born January 2, 1931), also spelled Zakariya Tamir, is a Syrian short story writer.
[5] At the same time, as an autodidact, he spent many hours reading various books, he became interested in politics and was encouraged by contact with intellectuals to continue his education at night school.
In 1980 he was dismissed from editing the periodical al-Marifah, published by the Syrian Ministry of Culture, as a result of the publication of extracts from Abd al-Rahman al-kawakibi’s (1849–1902) book, Tabai al istibadad (“The Characteristics of Despotism, 1900), in which the author denounced tyranny and called for freedom.
[9] We are deceiving ourselves if we believe that a literary work written and published in a country where 70 per cent of the population is illiterate, can change the political and social life of the country..it is up to political organization..and not to romantic literature.. to change the present situation.A common theme in his writing has been that the strongest of us can gradually be broken and tamed by those who wield the whip of power.
Those who rule, Zakaria Tamer tells us in many a story, while devoid of all the noble qualities that should be theirs, possess the intuitive awareness of how to use the carrot and the stick.
Though humor is not one of the ingredients of these stories, the writer does allow himself an occasional sardonic grin at the forms of injustice to which man is subjected by his rulers, his fellow men and the circumstances of lives enclosed in routine of ill-rewarded work and unfulfillment.
The secret police, with their physical brutalities, feature in many of the stories, as for instance in the dark-humored "A summary of What Happened to Mohammed al-Mahmoudi", where a harmless old man finds that even in death he is not immune from their attention.
The directness and absence of embroidery with which Zakaria Tamer writes is a powerful weapon in giving distinctive form to the basic themes to which he returns again and again.