“A Palestinian American
Sex and the City
.” —
The Atlantic
• “Wonderfully brash and sparkling...This book fills in gaps in our understanding.” —
Oprah Daily
• “Shamieh balances her characters’ painful family history and their boisterously funny voices.” —
New Yorker
A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women.
Arabella gets an unexpected chance at love when she’s thrust into a conflict and history she’s tried to avoid all her life.
Zoya is playing matchmaker for her last unmarried granddaughter and stirring up buried memories.
Naya is keeping a secret from her children that will change all their lives.
Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic—that might garner international attention—in the West Bank. Her mother, Naya, and grandmother, Zoya, hatch a plot to match her with Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz, since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster...
With biting hilarity,
Too Soon
introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family’s epic journey fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, the three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut,
illuminates our shared history and asks, how can we set ourselves free?