Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction
One of
Publishers Weekly
's 10 Best Books of 2025
A
New York Times
Best Book of the Year So Far | Editors’ Choice
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Named a most anticipated book of summer by
Vulture
|
The Boston Globe
One of the BBC’s 10 Best Books of the Summer | A
Times
(London) Best Book of the Year
“One gawps . . . at its breadth and ambition. [
The Sisters
is] a transnational tour de force.” —Alexandra Jacobs,
The New York Times Book Review
“One of this summer’s most buzzed-about novels.” —Nilanjana Roy,
Financial Times
“A classic story about sibling rivalry . . . One of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage.”
—Fredrik Backman,
The New Yorker
“[
] generates every kind of heat . . . If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award–winning author of
The Rabbit Hutch
“Astonishing . . . Every character—every sentence—is startlingly, indubitably alive.” —Katie Kitamura, author of
Audition
and
Intimacies
An addictively entertaining family saga by a National Book Award finalist.
Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger.
Ina meets her future husband when she’s dragged to a New Year’s rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down—and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are.
Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s
is a big, vivid family saga of the highest order—an addictively entertaining tour de force.