PenguinReaders' Group
 

Editors' Choice

By Juliette Mitchell, Editor, Hamish Hamilton

The Road from Damascus

The Road from Damascus by Robin Yassin-Kassab

The Road from Damascus is a very simple story. It's about a woman and a man - a married couple - who find themselves growing apart. Sami is 31, British-Syrian, and still struggling to finish his PhD, while his British-Iraqi wife, Muntaha, knows what she wants from life.

So it's a straightfoward story but also one which takes us into big themes and to the very depths of an emotional and spiritual crisis. And it's the first British novel we've come across to take on multicultural, globalised London from the perspective of first and second generation Arab immigrants (some wholly Westernised, some not, some in between). It does so with an energy and insight that takes you into the heart of their world - which is both visible to us and yet profoundly hidden.

At its heart, of course, is a love story, set within a wider story of assimilation, set within a yet wider story: the story of how we all fill the 'god-shaped hole' - the place within us which needs to believe, to have faith, in someone or something. We're sure you'll enjoy it, and it should get you thinking and talking, too.

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