At the Feet of Mothers

By Adnan Mahmutovic

Joseph Schneider grows up in a Cherokee-Jewish family in the Smokey mountains of North Carolina. He dreams to be a cook on the biggest ship there is in the world but his attachment to his mother Rachel and his rootedness to the little mountain village keep him from moving on. When his mother falls ill she reveals she stole him from a Palestinian girl Aliya in the 80s when she volunteered at a hospital in Gaza. Joseph refuses to know anything more about his biological mother, but later when Rachel dies, Joseph honors his promise to her and embarks on a painful pilgrimage to the holy land, a walk in the footsteps of his American mother and a search for Aliya.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cinnamon Press
• Release date: May 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788641012

Adnan Mahmutovic

Adnan Mahmutović (1974) became a refugee of war in 1993 and ended up in Sweden. He worked for a decade with people with brain damage while studying English and philosophy. He has PhD in English literature and MFA in creative writing, and he is currently a lecturer and writer-in-residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. As a part of a global project Transnational Creatives and GALA Network, he has started and is managing the first MA in Transnational Creative Writing. He has published a novel Thinner than a Hair with Cinnamon Press (2010), as well as short story collection How to Fare Well and Stay Fair (Salt, 2012), and a volume of literary criticism Ways of Being Free (2012).