The Arsonists' City
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Feels revolutionary in its freshness." —Entertainment Weekly
“The Arsonists’ City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan’s hands, one family’s tale becomes the story of a nation—Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States. It’s the kind of book we are lucky to have.”—Rumaan Alam
A rich, sprawling family saga, a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East, and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home
The Nasr family is spread across the globe—Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut—a constant touchstone—and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell.
The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets—lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame—that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, those family secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this Lebanese-American family together.
In a work of literary fiction teeming with wisdom, warmth, and characters born of remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us again that "fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us" (NPR).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This touching family drama will remind you that love knows no borders…and neither does dysfunction. The far-flung Nasir family has always had a home base in Beirut, but when heart specialist patriarch Idris decides to sell the family compound, the resulting outcry unearths secrets that could devastate the clan’s bonds. Hala Alyan’s novel jumps back and forth across decades and points of view, painting a vivid picture of Lebanon and Syria. Each of Alyan’s beautifully drawn characters—from Idris’ wife Mazna, an unfulfilled would-be actress, to her Americanized and emotionally wary daughter Ava—has a strong personality that has, in some way, been touched by the heartbreak of the family’s troubled homeland. With its poignant story and vivid sense of place, The Arsonists’ City is a book to get lost in.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and novelist Alyan (Salt Houses) illuminates in this exquisite novel the recent history of Lebanon and Syria through the intimate tragedies and betrayals befalling one family. After Lebanese American heart surgeon Idris Nasr's father dies, Idris feels compelled to sell the family's ancestral home in Beirut. His Syrian-born wife, Mazna and their three adult children—Ava, Mimi, and Naj—fear he's making a mistake, and they gather in Beirut to host a memorial and discuss the sale. All of the children harbor jealousies of various kinds and hide secrets from one another and from their parents, but no secrets are bigger or more potentially devastating than those carried by Mazna, and they gradually emerge in flashbacks of her life before she married Idris. The family conflict plays out over the summer of 2019, and the narrative alternates with scenes from Mazna and Idris's lives in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and in California during the early years of their marriage. "We don't choose what we belong to," Mazna considers near the novel's end, and in Alyan's sweeping yet intimate narrative, this thought holds true for the characters' relationships to family and country alike. Tenderly and compassionately told, and populated with complicated and flawed characters, the Nasrs' story interrogates nostalgia, memory, and the morality of keeping secrets against the backdrop of a landscape and a people in constant flux. Alyan's debut was striking, and this one's even better.
