Light of hidden things

A young girl, renamed “America” in recognition of the United States’ role in liberating Kuwait, discovers that her name has become a measure of the growing anti-Western sentiment in her country. A shy Palestinian teenager is drawn into a failed suicide bombing plot orchestrated by two aggressive peers. A middle-aged man battling cancer reflects on his extramarital affairs as he faces death, remembering his wife’s unyielding forgiveness. A Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after a decade of captivity in Iraqi prisons.

Newspaper headlines speak of war, turmoil, and religious conflicts, but if you look beyond that, you would see another side of life in the Middle East: teenage love, the yearning for self-independence, the fragility of marriage, and pain in most forms of its human manifestation, especially in daily life.

Mai Al-Nakib’s vibrant stories capture the overlooked moments in the lives of those living in this charged region of the world, revealing the ability of ordinary things to preserve extraordinary memories.

*****

“Mai Al-Nakib’s exceptional perspective on the wounded Middle East landscape makes you hopeful for the arrival of a new and exciting literary voice.”

The National

*****

Winner of the Best First Book Award at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2014.