Isabella Hammad's highly anticipated novel, Enter Ghost, takes readers on a unique journey through modern-day Palestine, exploring themes of displacement, diaspora, and the unbreakable bonds of family and shared resistance. Hammad's passionate and thoughtful writing brings to life a timely and unforgettable story, shedding light on the struggles of artistry under occupation.
Read: May 2023
by Isabella Hammad
Isabella Hammad‘s highly anticipated novel, Enter Ghost, takes readers on a unique journey through modern-day Palestine, exploring themes of displacement, diaspora, and the unbreakable bonds of family and shared resistance. Hammad’s passionate and thoughtful writing brings to life a timely and unforgettable story, shedding light on the struggles of artistry under occupation.
The novel follows Sonia Nasir, an actress who returns to Haifa after years away from her family’s homeland to visit her sister, Haneen. However, this is no ordinary trip for Sonia, as it marks her first visit since the second intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. Still recovering from a disastrous love affair and a dissolute marriage, Sonia finds her relationship with Palestine to be fragile, both bone-deep and new.
As opening night approaches, a troupe of Palestinian actors faces numerous violent obstacles. Sonia meets Mariam, a local director who ropes her into a production of Hamlet on the West Bank. She rehearses Gertrude’s lines in classical Arabic and spends more time in Ramallah than in Haifa, working alongside a group of dedicated men from all over historic Palestine. Despite their competing egos and priorities, each group member is united in their desire to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. Amidst it all, Sonia has the daunting yet exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
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by Rebecca Roanhorse
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.
I have always enjoyed fantasy novels like Black Sun, and this is the first one set in the Pre-Columbian Americas.
A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sunIn the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year, it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as quickly as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Will Serapio be harmless or a villain? The answer, my friend, will be known when you read this book or perhaps the second one in the trilogy.
Before meeting and falling forever in love with Jan, I had dreamed of the life of an American Studies professor. Thousands of students are relieved to know I did not pursue that life. If I had opened that door, an area of focus would have been on Pre-Columbian Americas.
I recommend this book and will read the next two in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.
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by Bushra Rehman
Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman is a book I encouraged friends to read before I finished reading it. I highly recommend this page-turner novel, which is punctuated by both joy and loss, full of ’80s music and beloved books. Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion is a must-read coming-of-age story of Razia Mirza, a girl struggling to reconcile her heritage and faith with her desire to be true to herself.
Razia Mirza, the protagonist, leaps off the page or screen. Bushra Rehman describes Corona with prose that is vibrant and clear-eyed. When I lived in Brooklyn, I had, on a few occasions, meetings in Corona a decade before the novel’s setting. Reading the book made me remember that time and place and understand intuitively the world that Razia was struggling to reconcile.
Razia’s choice between her heart and her family is one I will not reveal. However, the novel defines the conflicts between the Pakistani-American community and the love that Razia and Anglea experience in clear prose, and the reader can easily accept various resolutions.
The choice that Rasia makes left me desiring to know what happens next. I have added Bushra Rehman to my favorite authors and plan to read more of her novels.
I had this novel on my list for the last month but could not get to it until now. I wish I had read it sooner. It is the eighth book I have read in 2023.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. Razia’s heart is broken when a family rift drives the girls apart. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close-knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing miniskirts, and cutting school to explore the city.
When Razia is accepted to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, the gulf between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be, widens. At Stuyvesant, Razia meets Angela and is attracted to her in a way that blossoms into a new understanding. When an Aunty discovers their relationship in the community, Razia must choose between her family and her future.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Salman Rushdie
Victory City: A Novel by Salman Rushdie is an epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie. It is well written and was a page-turner from page one to the end. I highly recommend this novel and encourage everyone to read it.
Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is a testament to storytelling’s power. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. I was hooked when Pampa Kampana provided the seeds that created Victory City out of thin air.
David Remnick’s interview with Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker provided background I would have missed.
“The first kings of Vijayanagara announced, quite seriously, that they were descended from the moon,” Rushdie said. “So when these kings, Harihara and Bukka, announce that they’re members of the lunar dynasty, they’re associating themselves with those great heroes. It’s like saying, ‘I’ve descended from the same family as Achilles.’ Or Agamemnon. And so I thought, Well, if you could say that, I can say anything.”
Above all, the book is buoyed by the character of Pampa Kampana, who, Rushdie says, “just showed up in my head” and gave him his story, his sense of direction. Rushdie’s pleasure in writing the novel was in “world building” and, at the same time, writing about a character building that world: “It’s me doing it, but it’s also her doing it.” The pleasure is infectious. “Victory City” is an immensely enjoyable novel. It is also an affirmation. At the end, with the great city in ruins, what is left is not the storyteller but her words:
The Goodreads summary provides a brief overview,
In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing her mother’s death, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga–literally victory city–the wonder of the world.
Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on Parvati’s task: giving women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry–with Pampa Kampana at its center.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Anne Applebaum
Today, I plunged into the captivating world of “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World” by Anne Applebaum. I listened to an engaging discussion between her and the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Jonathan Brent. Their insights left me eager for more, and I couldn’t resist making this book my next read. I’m thrilled to dive deeper into her thought-provoking perspective!
This compelling New York Times bestseller by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author paints a chilling picture of how autocratic regimes join forces to erode democracy globally. Applebaum sheds light on this pressing issue and offers insights on how we can unite to fight back.
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: An all-powerful leader is at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don’t stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc. aren’t linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather by a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan’s essay calling for “containment” of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to reorient their policies to fight a new threat fundamentally.
There is no liberal world order anymore, and the aspiration to create one no longer seems real. But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect. Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them. So few of them have existed across human history; so many have existed for a short time and then failed. They can be destroyed from the outside and from the inside, too, by division and demagogues. Or they can be saved. But only if those of us who live in them are willing to make the effort to save them.
After finishing Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” this closing paragraph should be a call to action. Failure to respond to the challenge will doom our future to an unacceptable one. I recommend this book and encourage people to read it, discuss its contents, and take action to save our collective future.
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by Ocean Vuong
In “The Emperor of Gladness,” Ocean Vuong explores the interconnected themes of history, memory, and time, revealing how love, labor, and loneliness are the foundation of American life. At its core, the narrative presents a courageous epic that examines what it means to live on the margins of society and confront the wounds that affect our shared humanity. It highlights the lengths we are willing to go to grasp one of life’s most fleeting gifts: a second chance.
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship with himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong‘s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story.
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he once worked as a fast-food server, which inspired The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.
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by Arundhati Roy
“Mother Mary Comes to Me,” Arundhati Roy‘s first memoir, is an intimate and inspiring account of how she became the person and writer she is today. It explores how her life was shaped by various circumstances, particularly her complex relationship with her extraordinary mother, whom she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” The book has been named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Top Ten Books of 2025 and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.
Devastated by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022, Roy experienced a mix of confusion and shame over the depth of her emotions. She began writing to understand her feelings for the mother she had distanced herself from at eighteen, not out of a lack of love, but to preserve her ability to love her. Her writing marks the beginning of an astonishing, often disturbing, and surprisingly humorous memoir that chronicles the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to her accomplishments as a prize-winning novelist and essayist, and continues to the present day.
With the scope, richness, and emotional depth characteristic of her novels, “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness“, as well as the passion, political insight, and warmth found in her essays, “Mother Mary Comes to Me” serves as an ode to freedom and a tribute to complicated love and fierce grace—a memoir unlike any other.
Arundhati Roy is the author of “The God of Small Things,” which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” a novel translated into more than 40 languages and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Roy has also published several nonfiction works, including “The End of Imagination,” “The Doctor and the Saint,” “My Seditious Heart,” and “Azadi.” In 2023, she received the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and in 2024, she received the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” She resides in Delhi.
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