The Wrong End of the Telescope
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4.3 • 8 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION
By National Book Award winner for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) and National Book Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.
Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them.
Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Through this touching novel, Rabih Alameddine gives us incredible insight into the crisis experienced by Syrian refugees. Lebanese American surgeon Mina arrives to volunteer at the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece. At first, she feels overwhelmed by the circumstances, but she soon develops a friendship with a Syrian woman named Sumaiya who’s trying to hide her terminal illness from her family. The connection that forms between these two unique women is incredibly moving, as Mina struggles with her own estrangement from her family over her trans and queer identity. Alameddine conjures many captivating stories involving the people Mina meets during her time at Moria, creating a fascinating, colorful, and deeply moving collage of human experiences. The Wrong End of the Telescope is a poignant tribute to how the power of human connection can cast light on even the darkest moments.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Lebanese doctor travels to the island of Lesbos to help refugees and confront her past in the profound and wonderful latest from Alameddine (The Angel of History), a meditation on loss, resilience, and love. Born in Beirut but long settled in the U.S., Mina Simpson is trans and estranged from every member of her family except her older brother Mazen, who flies to the island to assist her. Soon, their paths cross that of a blocked Lebanese writer. The chapters alternate between Mina's account of her time on Lesbos, where she treats a Syrian woman named Sumaiya who is dying from liver cancer and pleads with Mina not to tell her family, and second-person narration directed at the writer, who encouraged Mina to write about the refugees because he didn't feel up to the task ("You weren't able to find the right words even after numerous sessions on your psychiatrist's couch," Mina narrates). Confronted by the pain so many refugees describe, Mina recalls the lost world of her own childhood and bonds with Sumaiya over their shared desire to protect their families from the truth. As Mina and her writer-interlocutor are each consumed by the effort to communicate the horror of the refugee experience, Alameddine crafts a wise, deeply moving story that can still locate humor in the pit of hell (Mina, agreeing to let the writer tell her story, jokes, "Whatever you do ... don't fucking call it A Lebanese Lesbian in Lesbos"). This is a triumph.
