EMBRACE ON BROOKLYN BRIDGE BY. Ezzedine C. Fishere TRANS. John Peate

On the eve of Salma’s twenty-first birthday, scattered friends and family converge on New York for a celebration organized by Darwish, her obstinate grandfather. Each guest’s journey to this fated gathering takes on an unexpected significance, as they find themselves revisiting the choices they have made in life, and rethinking their relationships with one another and the country in which they live.

Traveling seamlessly between Egypt and the United States, Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge is a story about how we construct and shift our identities, and about a family’s search for home.

REVIEWS

"Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge is a remarkable novel for its style, its plot, and its reach into the experience of straddling two worlds and two states of being."
—Banipal

"Taking his literary career to new heights . . . Fishere’s characters defy expectations."
—Egypt Independent

"A deeper view of the world of Arabs abroad . . . [Brooklyn] represents the symbol of Arab immigrants without carrying their usual stereotypical qualities ... Fishere offers no simple solutions to his characters and doesn't try to preach in one way or another, but rather to flash a light on a different dimension and let his heroes do the talking."
—Al-Ahram Online

"A beautiful, unique novel."
—Gamal al-Ghitani, author of Zayni Barakat

"Traveling between Cairo and New York, Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge is a story of Arab–American life, and of a family’s search for home."
—Marcia Lynx Qualey, Arabic Literature (in English) Blog

"Fishere’s method movingly teases out the spaces between belonging and forced, awkward fits, and the result is certain to endure in the reader’s consciousness . . . . [Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge] is Mrs. Dalloway for an age when conversations about immigration, particularly from Arab nations, dominate—a gripping portrait of the tenuous spaces that marginalized populations are made to occupy, and a searing examination of the struggle to belong.”
—Foreword Reviews