No Land to Light On
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
***'Tense, lyrical, intelligent' - The Big Issue***
***A heart-wrenching human story - Saga***
Exit West meets An American Marriage in this breathtaking and evocative novel about a young Syrian couple in the throes of new love, on the cusp of their bright future...when a travel ban rips them apart on the eve of their son's birth.
Boston, 2017: When Hadi returns to his heavily pregnant partner Sama after a trip to Jordan to bury his father, he is stopped at border control - a hostile new immigration law has just been enacted - while she awaits him on the other side.
Worlds apart, suspended between hope and disillusion as hours become days become weeks, Sama and Hadi yearn for a way back to each other, and to the life they'd dreamed up together. But does that life exist any more, or was it only an illusion?
Achingly intimate yet poignantly universal, No Land to Light On is the story of a family caught up in forces beyond their control, fighting for the freedom and home they found in one another.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zgheib's moving if unbalanced sophomore effort (after The Girls of 17 Swann Street) chronicles how a 2017 U.S. executive order to ban travelers from Muslim countries from entering the country affects a married couple. Hadi Deeb, who suffered torture and imprisonment under the shabiha militia during the Syrian civil war, is invited in 2015 to speak at Harvard University about his life. There, he meets student Sama Zayat, and they soon get married. Sama left Syria to further her education shortly before the war escalated, and her dreamy reminiscences differ from Hadi's memories of the country's destruction. After Hadi hears of his father's ailing health, he flies to see him in Jordan, but upon his attempt to return home to Boston, he is deported from Logan Airport to Jordan. Alone, Sama reels with fear and prematurely delivers their son, Naseem, whose odds of living are fairly low. Sama ultimately must choose between her husband and her adopted country. Many of the details leading up to this moment are heartfelt, with lots of heavy drama, which makes Zgheib's open-ended conclusion feel a bit discordant and unsatisfying. This leaves a strange taste, but for the most part readers will enjoy Zgheib's story of hope and perseverance.
