Against the Loveless World

Arab American Book Award Winner 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist 2020 Athenaeum Literary Award Finalist 2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner Longlisted for Rathbones Folio Prize “Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives conflicts horrendous injustices and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us.” —Alice Walker Pulitzer Prize–winning author In this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times) Nahr a young Palestinian woman fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.. As Nahr sits locked away in solitary confinement she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the seventies to Palestinian refugees she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man raising children and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage her family teeters on the brink of poverty she’s forced to prostitute herself and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan she lands in Palestine where she finally makes a home falls in love and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister The Serial Killer and her dark contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties. Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed beautiful and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose this powerful novel presents a searing darkly funny and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.