About this Event
A profound, bittersweet portrait of a Gazan immigrant’s heroic efforts to heal his community and birth love from tragedy.
Readers are rarely lukewarm on Naeem Murr’s work, which has been compared by critics to an astonishing array of greats: Margaret Atwood, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Flannery O’ Connor, Robert Penn Warren, William Faulker, Vladimir Nabokov, and more. His novels are likely to elicit wonderment, as in “the perfect book” (Business Day, South Africa) and “the best novel I've read in years” (Christian Wiman, author of My Bright Abyss). And in this, his first book in two decades, the conflicts, griefs, and hopes of an immigrant community in a Chicago condo come to represent those of the wounded world we all must share.
As a financial crisis looms, Jamal “Jack” Shaban is trying to save his neighbors from bankruptcy. But who is Jack, really? For his flight attendant colleagues, he’s an object of desire, even love, particularly for his sweetly bawdy Wisconsinite best friend, Birdy. Birdy knows nothing about Dimra, Jack’s traditional Muslim wife, with whom Jack is desperate to have a child. Nor does Dimra know about Jack’s attraction to Marcia: an angry single mom new to the building. The resulting tangle of love, desire, and conflict returns Jack to the violence of 1980s Gaza, where a taboo affair nearly destroyed his life.
A man of many sides—adulterer, devoted husband, fixer, community leader, liar, and the survivor of human and cosmic cruelty in both the past and the novel’s present—Jack is a paragon of both desire and hope, someone who has committed to love because the alternative is utter darkness.
A gorgeous blend of gentle comedy and poignant tragedy, of blasted hopes and one man’s indomitable dedication to the well-being of others, this is a book to love and never forget.
Naeem Murr is the author of three previous novels: The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book, The Genius of the Sea, and The Perfect Man, which was awarded The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His new novel, Every Exit Brings You Home, will be published by W.W. Norton in February 2026. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, among his awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University.
Shauna Seliy is the author of the novel When We Get There (Bloomsbury). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, the New Orleans Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New York Times.
Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other access needs please email .
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States
USD 0.00
