Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR * Nylon * Kirkus Reviews * Bustle * BookPage “Moving and beautifully written.” — Entertainment Weekly On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, Salma reads the girl’s future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel and luck. … Salma reads the girl’s future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.
Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses follows three generations of a Palestinian family and asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can’t go home again.
“[Alyan is] a master.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“Beautiful . . . An example of how fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us.” — NPR
“Gorgeous and sprawling . . . Heart-wrenching, lyrical and timely.” — Dallas Morning News
“[Salt Houses] illustrate[s] the inherited longing and sense of dislocation passed like a baton from mother to daughter.” — New York Times Book Review
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This is a very beautifully written and told piece of fiction, with a lot of historical facts. We follow four generations of a Palestinian family, from the 1960’s to present day, starting off in Jaffa, then Nablus, they will then move to Kuwait City, Amman, Beirut, some to France and the USA, yet always returning to their roots and family when they could.
We go through their struggles as they experience other upheavals in the other location they have moved to, we feel the tension of the area, how each of these characters react to the situations, or how involved they are in them. It was an interesting and educational way to see and feel these conflicts, through this families eyes.
The other part of the story is a very universal one, one which relates to all of us. Where one goes through the normal sequence of conflict between parent and child, sibling differences, and their want of Independence, which is such a universal challenge for us all. A testament that despite our political views, our ways of seeing the world, our traditions, actions, etc. we are all basically the same. Something that we should never forget.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC of this book.
I really look forward to more stories by this author.
Improbably, Salt Houses is the third multi-generational narrative I’ve read this year. Following the Koreans and the Italians, I’ve hit on the Palestinians. Hala Alyan’s Yacoubs are certainly the most peripatetic of these families, forced by events from their ancestral homes in Palestine into Nablus in ’48 and then from Nablus to Kuwait City in ’67 and then from Kuwait City to Amman in ’90.
Without giving the plot away, I can certainly say that the younger generations find themselves part of the diaspora in Europe and the U.S. some years after that. Phew. Also: these are people who, relatively easily, transport themselves from country-to-country and continent-to-continent is telling. No refugee camps here. And so, it is interesting to consider the history, the sadness, the anger, the resignation, and ultimately the meaning of home from the perspective of people who don’t always behave as they should and seemingly “have it all.”
Despite the turmoil, Alyan’s story centers on the relationships the characters have with one another, parents, spouses, children, siblings, grandparents, and cousins. Alyan’s story also moves at a good clip, covering more than half a century in a succinct 300 pages. I was fascinated to read an interview with Alyan (available on Amazon), in which she talks about her writing process, specifically that this began as the story of a young man, presumably Mustafa, in pre-1967 Palestine, because in its final form, the protagonist is his sister, Alia.
Alyan’s prose is lovely and the characters are just maddening enough to be real. I found this a quick, but thoughtful, read, and would that I would particularly recommend to someone looking to broaden their reading horizons beyond the “usual” perspectives.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2018/02/salt-houses.html)
Did not care for the ending but otherwise is a good book.
A very engaging and enlightening saga of the Palestinian diaspora and how it affects multiple generations of a family. I couldn’t put it down!
This book is an view of the Palestinian/ Israel on going wars and the impact on
Palestinian families.
A powerful exploration of the tensions in the Mid East from a Palestinian perspective. Definitely recommend.
These characters taught me about Arab Paladtinian life and the difficulties of mosque inspired passions.
There have always been and will always be people who are uprooted from their land of birth for political or religious reasons. This is the poignant story of several generations of one Palestinian family who was forced to leave their homeland. I have a fondness for stories about families, especially if those stories takes place in a foreign country. My mind can travel freely while my butt is firmly planted on a reading cushion at home. And, because I love stories with several narrators, this one didn’t disappoint. From the point if view of multiple characters in Alyan’s novel, we learn how each feels about their separation, isolation, and refugee experience. We also learn about the Westernized Arab culture, treated with respect and care by Alyan. I loved this novel. It stayed with me a long time.
This book follows a Palestinian family through decades during the last half of the 19th century as they flee from Palestine to Jordan, Kuwait etc. during upheavals.
The characters are wonderful and the world-building information it provides are rarely available in as great a format.
Shows the how effects of colonialism and displacement follow a Middle Eastern family for several generations. Excellently drawn characters.
Salt Houses is about multiple generations surviving in the Middle East from the 60’s through present time. It is a touching book about family relationships amid changing culture and being uprooted from homes. It is also a lesson about the fragile line of culture and language when being resettled, whether by choice or necessity.
This book helped me to understand things about the Palestinian people that I had never thought about before. I am recommending it to my friends because I think it is unlike anything most of us have ever read.
I thought this book would give me insight into the Palestinians’ story, but it never explained what was going on historically. I found it lackluster and sometimes confusing. There was not much of a story line to cling to.