Overview

Set between London and Baghdad, Saleem Haddad's brilliant second novel is a sweeping, multigenerational tale of art, exile, memory, and the enduring legacies of war. In the summer of 2014, three long estranged Iraqi-British sisters are pulled back into each other's orbit by the rediscovery of their late father's long-lost paintings. Beautiful, elusive Zainab; embittered, practical Mediha; and headstrong, queer Ishtar each lay claim to their father's legacy--an artistic and personal inheritance entwined with betrayal, exile, and a homeland they no longer recognize. As the sisters fight to preserve, erase, or repurpose the past, Zainab's estranged son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by trauma and heartbreak, returns to the family fold. With the reemergence of buried memories comes a reckoning, and the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart. Spanning continents and decades--from 1950s Baghdad to contemporary London, from the Tigris River to Yemeni refugee camps--Floodlines is at once an intimate family drama and, in its scope, a modern epic. It is a rare novel that bridges the historic and the immediate and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to belong, to create, to endure.

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Reviews

Praise for Saleem Haddad's debut novel, Guapa ""This immensely readable novel is fluent, passionate and emotionally honest. Equally astute in its analysis of Arab and American mores, the book's characters are nuanced and dynamic; it gives fresh life to the maxim 'the personal is political.'""--The Guardian ""A vibrant, wrenching début novel... sensuous and caustic, full of smoke and blood.""--The New Yorker ""Guapa challenges the notion of what a 'conventional' love story should look like, and as one of few queer novels with an Arab protagonist, it must not be overlooked.""--Lambda Literary ""At its best, Guapa deftly captures the surrealism both of living a double life and navigating the hall of mirrors within which a quasi-totalitarian regime encloses society.""--Star Tribune ""Guapa is a brilliant novel. It has so many components to it: a political revolution, a religious battle, the questioning of the narrator's Arabness, and homophobia.""--Hedgehog Book Reviews ""Saleem Haddad's debut is a pacey, character-driven novel where revolution, sexuality, friendship, family, history and geo-politics collide.""--openDemocracy

Author Information

Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to a Palestinian-Lebanese father and an Iraqi-German mother, and educated in Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and has advised on humanitarian and peacebuilding issues throughout West Asia and North Africa. He is the author of the acclaimed debut Guapa, a 2017 Stonewall Honor Book and the winner of the 2017 Polari Prize. His 2019 directorial debut, Marco, was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for ""Best British Short Film"" and is available to watch on YouTube. He is currently based in Lisbon.

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