*As featured as an editor's pick on Radio Four's OPEN BOOK*
*One of the Guardian's books to look out for in 2024*
"An immersive feminist novel that meshes the personal and political to moving effect" Preti Taneja, Financial Times
"A brilliant novel of the Palestinian diaspora. Funny and gritty, and bursting with life and humour" Ahdaf Soueif, Guardian
Born a girl to parents who expected a boy, Jihad grows up treated like the eldest son, wearing boy's clothing and sharing the financial burden of head of the household with her father.
Now middle-aged, each night Jihad tells her daughter a story from her life. As Maleka prepares to leave home to attend university abroad, her mother revisits the past of their Palestinian family, tenderly describing their life in exile in Kuwait and her own experiences of love and loss as she grows up.
Huzama Habayeb weaves a richly observed and affectionate portrait of a Palestinian family displaced from their homeland, exploring with humour and poise the love and betrayal that pursues Jihad and her family from Kuwait to Jordan to Dubai. This is a novel whose words will resound long after you finish the final page.
Translated from the Arabic by Kay Heikkinen
- ISBN10 1529415659
- ISBN13 9781529415650
- Publish Date 28 March 2024
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Quercus Publishing
- Imprint MacLehose Press
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 288
- Language English