About this Event
No moderator, no script, no safe distance between writer and audience. A reading of a personal essay will be recorded by This American Life as part of an upcoming collaboration.
This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
Can’t make the event?
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by June 11 to request.
Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]
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“One gawps . . . at its breadth and ambition. The Sisters is a transnational tour de force.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review
Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger.
Ina meets her future husband when she’s dragged to a New Year’s rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down—and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are.
Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters is a big, vivid family saga of the highest order—an addictively entertaining tour de force.
Photo credit: Max Burkhalter
Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of six novels, seven plays, and a collection of
essays and short stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty-five
languages and his plays are performed worldwide. He received the Village Voice
Obie Award for his debut play Invasion! and has been a finalist for the August Prize,
Sweden’s most prestigious national book award, three times, winning it once for
his novel Everything I Don’t Remember. His novel The Family Clause was a finalist for
the National Book Award and won France’s Prix Médicis Étranger. The Sisters, his
first book written in English, was published by FSG in 2025 and was named one
of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year and longlisted for the National
Book Award for Fiction. A former Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library,
Khemiri now teaches in the MFA program at NYU.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 13.61 to USD 25.22
