A Map of Home - Hardcover

Jarrar, Randa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590512723 ISBN 13: 9781590512722

Publisher: Other Press, 2008

Synopsis

Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates the story of her childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Egypt (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), and her family's last flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a sharp, loving portrait of an eccentric middle-class family, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to her father's home in the West Bank; the fights with her father, who wants her to become a famous professor and stay away from boys; the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday; and the scare she gives her family when she runs away from home.

Funny, charming, and heartbreaking, A Map of Home is the kind of book Tristram Shandy or Huck Finn would have narrated had they been born Egyptian-Palestinian and female in the 1970s.

About this title

About the Author

Randa Jarrar

Randa Jarrar was born in Chicago in 1978. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved back to the U.S. at thirteen. She is a writer and translator whose honors include the Million Writers Award, the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Award and the Geoffrey James Gosling Prize. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares as well as in numerous journals and anthologies. Her translations from the Arabic have appeared in Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers; recently, she translated Hassan Daoud’s novel, The Year of the Revolutionary New Bread-Making Machine. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A Map of Home is her first novel. Visit Randa online at rockslinga.blogspot.com.

Reviews

Starred Review. Jarrar's sparkling debut about an audacious Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt and Texas is intimate, perceptive and very, very funny. Nidali Ammar is born in Boston to a Greek-Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father, and moves to Kuwait at a very young age, staying there until she's 13, when Iraq invades. A younger brother is born in Kuwait, rounding out a family of complex citizenships. During the occupation, the family flees to Alexandria in a wacky caravan, bribing soldiers along the way with whiskey and silk ties. But they don't stay long in Egypt, and after the war, Nidali's father finds work in Texas. At first, Nidali is disappointed to learn that feeling rootless doesn't make her an outsider in the States, and soon it turns out the precocious and endearing Arab chick isn't very different from other American girls, a reality that only her father may find difficult to accept. Jarrar explores familiar adolescent ground—stifling parental expectations, precarious friendships, sensuality and first love—but her exhilarating voice and flawless timing make this a standout. (Sept.)
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Ah, eccentric families. In Jarrar’s first novel, the lovable Ammars are talkative, argumentative, and so alive they practically burst off the page. At the center of the story is Nidali, daughter of a Palestinian father and a Greek Egyptian (piano-playing) mother. Born in Boston, her childhood is spent first in Kuwait and then, when her family is forced to flee during the Gulf War, Egypt and eventually Houston. Permeated by Nidali’s yearning to understand her identity—particularly her Palestinian roots—Nidali is an astute observer, and Jarrar’s novel could be her diary. Unfortunately, this means we have to accompany her through a somewhat painful adolescence, along with a forbidden first romance with the pleasantly sarcastic Fakhr, and later the loss of her virginity to a Houstonian. Some of the sex scenes are so explicit, they are unnerving, but Jarrar is sophisticated and deft, and her impressive debut is especially intriguing considering her clever use of recent Middle East history. --Emily Cook

Edition details

• Publisher: Other Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1590512723
• ISBN 13: 9781590512722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304