• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Home
  • New & Noteworthy
  • What We’re Reading
  • Kids
  • Shop
  • Contact Us

Against the Loveless World

Susan Abulhawa

As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.

Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.

Related content

New & Noteworthy

Asian Literature

Fiction

From our shop

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Follow us on social media:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Monday - Friday 09h00 - 17h00

Saturday 09h00 - 16h00

Sunday 10h00 to 16h00

021 462 2425

71 Roeland Street

Cape Town