An Unlasting Home: A Novel
Written by Mai Al-Nakib
Narrated by Leila Buck
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
The debut novel from an award-winning short story writer: a multigenerational saga spanning Lebanon, Iraq, India, the United States, and Kuwait that brings to life the triumphs and failures of three generations of Arab women.
In 2013, Sara is a philosophy professor at Kuwait University, having returned to Kuwait from Berkeley in the wake of her mother’s sudden death eleven years earlier. Her main companions are her grandmother’s talking parrot, Bebe Mitu; the family cook, Aasif; and Maria, her childhood ayah and the one person who has always been there for her. Sara’s relationship with Kuwait is complicated; it is a country she always thought she would leave, and a country she recognizes less and less, and yet a certain inertia keeps her there. But when teaching Nietzsche in her Intro to Philosophy course leads to an accusation of blasphemy, which carries with it the threat of execution, Sara realizes she must reconcile her feelings and her place in the world once and for all.
Interspersed with Sara’s narrative are the stories of her grandmothers: beautiful and stubborn Yasmine, who marries the son of the Pasha of Basra and lives to regret it, and Lulwa, born poor in the old town of Kuwait, swept off her feet to an estate in India by the son of a successful merchant family; and her two mothers: Noura, who dreams of building a life in America and helping to shape its Mid-East policies, and Maria, who leaves her own children behind in Pune to raise Sara and her brother Karim and, in so doing, transforms many lives.
Ranging from the 1920s to the near present, An Unlasting Home traces Kuwait’s rise from a pearl-diving backwater to its reign as a thriving cosmopolitan city to the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion. At once intimate and sweeping, personal and political, it is an unforgettable epic and a spellbinding family saga.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Editor's Note
Blasphemous…
In an alternate reality, blasphemy has been made a capital crime in Kuwait. After living in California, philosophy professor Sara returns to Kuwait to feel closer to her family when the unthinkable happens: A student believes her lesson on Neitzsche breaks the law. With alternating perspectives between Sara and her great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents, Al-Nakib’s debut is an emotional look at family, the difficult decisions made by immigrants and refugees, and a commentary on the limits of personal choice.
Mai Al-Nakib
Mai Al-Nakib was born in Kuwait and spent the first six years of her life in London, Edinburgh, and St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University and is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Kuwait University. Her short story collection, The Hidden Light of Objects, was published by Bloomsbury Qatar in 2014. It won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s 2014 First Book Award. Her stories and essays have been widely published, most recently in World Literature Today and The LA Review of Books.
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Reviews for An Unlasting Home
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I enjoyed every moment of this story. I wish I could read about the rest of Sara's life.