Mai Al-Nakib Knihy

This debut novel from an award-winning short story writer is a multigenerational saga that spans Lebanon, Iraq, India, the United States, and Kuwait, illuminating the triumphs and failures of three generations of Arab women. In 2013, Sara, a philosophy professor at Kuwait University, returns to Kuwait after her mother's sudden death eleven years prior. Her companions include her grandmother's talking parrot, Bebe Mitu; the family cook, Aasif; and Maria, her childhood ayah. Sara's relationship with Kuwait is complex; she feels a pull to leave yet is held back by inertia. When a teaching incident involving Nietzsche leads to an accusation of blasphemy with dire consequences, Sara must confront her feelings and her identity. Interwoven with her story are the narratives of her grandmothers: Yasmine, who marries the son of the Pasha of Basra and lives with regret, and Lulwa, who rises from poverty in Kuwait to a life in India with a wealthy merchant's son. Additionally, Sara's mothers, Noura and Maria, shape her life in profound ways. Spanning from the 1920s to the near present, the novel traces Kuwait's transformation from a pearl-diving backwater to a cosmopolitan city, offering an intimate yet sweeping exploration of personal and political themes in an unforgettable family saga.

For fans of Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore. A young girl, renamed Amerika in honour of the US role in the liberation of Kuwait, finds her name has become a barometer of her country's growing hostility towards the West. A self-conscious Palestinian teenager is drawn into a botched suicide bombing by two belligerent classmates. A middle-aged man dying from cancer looks back on his extramarital affairs and the abiding forgiveness of his wife. A Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after being held captive in Iraq for a decade. The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you may see life in the Middle East as it is really lived - adolescent love, yearnings for independence, the fragility of marriage, pain of the most quotidian kind. Mai Al-Nakib's luminous stories carefully unveil the lives of ordinary people in the Middle East - and the power of ordinary objects to hold extraordinary memories.