Dreams of Ayn Ara

€16.99

A sweeping, multi-generational novel of the Palestinian diaspora, Dreams of Ayn Ara follows the Abu Sukkar family across continents as they navigate exile, memory, and the enduring legacy of 1948, searching for a way back to their ancestral home.

Permission

Dreams of Ayn Ara

Sara Abou Ghazal, translator Katharine Halls

The story

Sara Abou Ghazal’s English-language debut, translated by Katharine Halls, traces the enduring aftershocks of 1948, revealing how displacement reverberates across time, denying Palestinians not only a homeland, but a future.

About the author

Sara Abou Ghazal, translator Katharine Halls

Sara Abou Ghazal is a Palestinian writer who grew up in Beirut and now lives in Belgium. Dreams of Ayn Ara is her first novel and English-language debut.

Katharine Halls is a translator of contemporary Arabic literature. Her work has been awarded the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize, named finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and the EBRD Literature Prize, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for fiction, and longlisted for the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize.

Description

A sweeping, immersive portrait of a never-ending Nakba, Dreams of Ayn Ara follows the scattered Abu Sukkar family across generations and continents. From Stockholm to Paris, each member grapples with exile, memory, and fracture, while matriarch Zahra fights to hold them together. Guided by voices from beyond the grave and the strange intimacies of Facebook, Salwa searches for a way back to Ayn Ara, their ancestral home in Palestine.