Friday, May 15, 2020

Seven top novels about grieving a family member

Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants and the author of the novel The Beauty of Your Face and the prize-winning short story collection Code of the West. Stories from Code of the West (2017) have been awarded the Guild Literary Complex Prize for fiction, a Distinguished Story honor from Best American Short Stories, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. Mustafah teaches literature and creative writing to high school students outside of Chicago.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven books that "offer tender, and sometimes violent, representations of losing a parent or sibling and its complicated grief." One title on the list:
In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib

An Egyptian American family grapples with the murder-suicide of their son and their neighbor’s daughter. The parents not only lose a child, but his brother Khaled struggles to extricate himself from the dark shadow of tragedy. In compassionate and moving prose, Hassib reveals how time does not always temper grief and instead leaves us with painful questions surrounding those we’ve lost.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles.

--Marshal Zeringue