Questions & Answers

Madinah, 1973. Sixteen-year-old Alia Kutbi loses her father and finds that his bookstore, the only place she has ever been fully herself, now belongs to her uncle's plans instead of hers. He has chosen a groom. She has chosen the store. The novel is about what that choice costs in a city where a girl's reputation is her only currency, while the October War and the oil embargo close in on everyone's lives

No single true story, but a true world. I grew up inside the culture the novel describes, and the textures, the rosewater, the radio, Umm Kulthum in every kitchen, the rules spoken and unspoken, come from lived memory and research, not imagination alone.

The novel is complete and on its way to publication. The newsletter is the fastest way to know the moment it's available, and it also gets you Fatma's Kitchen, a free collection of recipes from the novel's world.

If The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali or The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi stayed with you, this novel lives on the same shelf: women's lives inside history, told from inside the culture rather than about it.

I write in English, with Arabic living inside the prose where the story needs it. Some phrases are translated, some are left as they are, the way a bilingual life actually sounds.

I hold the Arabic rights myself and an Arabic edition matters deeply to me. Publishers and rights professionals interested in Arabic or other translations can reach me through the contact page.

Please. A reader's guide with seventeen discussion questions will be available here, and I join book club conversations by video when schedules allow. Write to me through the contact page.

Yes. I have taught in Cairo and Saudi Arabia, and I speak about the novel's world, women's fiction from the Gulf, and the writing life. Contact page, again.

Fatma is Alia's mother, and her kitchen anchors the novel's home life. The free download collects recipes from that world for newsletter subscribers. It's my way of handing you something you can taste before you can read.