Book of Sands

A powerful, lyrical novel of the endurance of love, set amid the upheaval of the Arab Spring and the brutal repression of a totalitarian regime

Tarek, a young father, watches as the city he lives in is mired in protests, hemmed in by barricades and strangely inundated by great flocks of birds. Facing the threat of police arrest, he flees with his nine-year-old daughter, Neda. He is forced to leave behind his pregnant wife, Mona, under the watchful eye of Omar, her deeply troubled and religious brother. Compounding the difficulties of these times, babies refuse to be born and mothers stop giving birth.

As Tarek and Nada journey through villages razed by conflict toward a mountain refuge, they meet with travellers from Tarek's past and his time as a political prisoner. The reunion reveals secrets that Tarek must come to terms with for his own and Neda's sake. Ultimately, he must decide where this journey will take them and if he will ever be able to return home again.

In the tradition of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Orhan Pamuk's Snow, debut novelist Karim Alrawi deftly weaves an atmospheric, multi-layered story of intimate lives, informed by recent events and heightened by touches of magic realism, set against the wider canvas of historic events.