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There's lots of interesting material in this book which offers up a Palestinian view of Middle Eastern politics ('I thought Saddam was invincible. I believed he'd be the Arab leader who would finally defeat Western imperialists and Zionist colonizers') with particular attention to the lives of women, but I'm less convinced that it works as a coherent novel.

Abulhawa mentions her research at the end and it seems to me that taking the experiences of multiple women and allocating them all to a single person overloads the characterization, rendering Nahr's life unconvincingly melodramatic. Everything bad that can happen to her does from multiple rapes to a short-lived marriage (view spoiler)[ as she falls in love with a gay Palestinian with an Israeli soldier lover who then haunts the story (hide spoiler)], to becoming one of Israel's most famous prisoners.

The writing doesn't always flow and motivations aren't always clear: I was never sure why Nahr falls into prostitution, for example, when she has a good day job and offers beauty treatments on the side: it feels shoehorned in because Abulhawa doesn't want to waste the research material. I might have preferred it if this had been written as non-fiction documentary: an illuminating read, just not the most engaging or coherent as a piece of fiction.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley