Spring: A Novel

Sami is no revolutionary. When the Arab Spring breaks out in 2011, he’s busy finishing school in Cairo and hiding his relationship with an American woman from his conservative mother, Suad. It’s a task that’s becoming impossible as events take a catastrophic turn.

But Suad won’t be fooled—her son has been distant and she knows it’s not about politics. Far away in the Nile Delta, she spends her days tending obsessively to her lemon grove,...