Suhaila lies in a coma in a Paris hospital. The loved ones of the title are the constellation of friends, predominantly women, who flock to Suhaila’s side from all over the world to envelope her in the warmth of friendship that may ultimately save her and enable her rebirth. Suhaila comes alive through the stories about her: her excesses, her love of dancing, of wine, and of poetry, despite years of abuse by her Iraqi husband, the bleakness of exile from home, and the frustrating separation from her only son. The Loved Ones is an intimately moving, polyphonic narrative of displacement and nomadism, a disjointed, at times disfigured tale that blends diverse time frames so that the past, the present, and the future are unified, interlocked, and intertwined. This award-winning novel is a hymn to friendship and to boundless giving that ultimately restores life—it is a story about memory and history, a story against forgetting.
The Loved Ones
Alia Mamdouh
Translated byMarilyn Booth
288 pp.
12.5X20cm
ISBN 9789774162084
Not for sale in North America
10.99
Also available by this author
The Loved Ones
Alia MamdouhTranslated byMarilyn Booth
Suhaila lies in a coma in a Paris hospital. The loved ones of the title are the constellation of friends, predominantly women, who flock to Suhaila’s side from all over the world to envelope her in the warmth of friendship that may ultimately save her and enable her rebirth. Suhaila comes alive through the stories about her: her excesses, her love of dancing, of wine, and of poetry, despite years of abuse by her Iraqi husband, the bleakness of exile from home, and the frustrating separation from her only son. The Loved Ones is an intimately moving, polyphonic narrative of displacement and nomadism, a disjointed, at times disfigured tale that blends diverse time frames so that the past, the present, and the future are unified, interlocked, and intertwined. This award-winning novel is a hymn to friendship and to boundless giving that ultimately restores life—it is a story about memory and history, a story against forgetting.
...read more
Hardbound
288 pp.15X23cm
16.99
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