★ 02/18/2019
In her exceptional debut, Hammad taps into the satisfying slow-burn style of classic literature with a storyline that captures both the heart and the mind. In 1914, 19-year-old Midhat Kamal leaves his hometown of Nablus in Palestine and heads to Marseilles to study medicine, where he stays with university professor Dr. Frederic Molineu and his daughter, Jeannette. Jeannette has just completed her own schooling in philosophy, and though her interactions with Midhat are initially based on distant friendliness, romantic notions begin to stir inside them both. Midhat nevertheless relocates to Paris after one year, changes his academic major to history, and evolves into an image like “the figure of the Parisian Oriental as he appeared on certain cigarette packets in corner stores.” After he returns home to Nablus, Midhat’s life is directed by his wealthy father, who plans for his eldest son to marry a local woman and work in the family business. Midhat remains separated from Jeannette, his first love, as national and geopolitical machinations continue to grind, and by 1936, Midhat has witnessed a number of historical regional changes, including British rule and the Arab fight for independence. Richly textured prose drives the novel’s spellbinding themes of the ebb and flow of cultural connections and people who struggle with love, familial responsibilities, and personal identity. This is an immensely rewarding novel that readers will sink into and savor. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Apr.)
★ 02/01/2019
DEBUT At the outbreak of World War I, Midhat Kamal, the privileged son of a textile merchant from Nablus, Palestine, is sent to Montpelier, France, to study medicine and avoid conscription. On arrival, he is warmly welcomed into the household of his mentor, Frederic Molineu. Midhat develops a keen interest in his studies and an even keener one in the doctor's daughter, Jeanette. But their love affair is cut short when Midhat discovers he's been the subject of Dr. Molineu's research. Hastily abandoning medicine and Jeanette, he departs for Paris, where he completes his degree at the Sorbonne, pals around with a group of like-minded Arabs, and affects the stylish air of a flaneur. At war's end, he feels compelled to return to Nablus, where his father expects him to join the business. Any hope Midhat harbors of a reunion with Jeanette is thwarted by his father's demand that he consent to an arranged marriage. VERDICT Against a backdrop of Arab nationalism and unrest caused by shifting political control of the region and waves of Jewish immigration, this finely plotted, big-hearted novel explores the origin of Mideast tensions that continue to this day. A compelling first novel. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/18.]—Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
★ 2019-01-21
An assured debut novel that sets the life of one man against the tumultuous backdrop of Palestine in the waning years of British occupation.
Midhat Kamal has been thoroughly steeped in French culture—writes Hammad, he "knew the names of his internal organs as ‘le poumon' and ‘le coeur' and ‘le cerveau' and ‘l'encéphale' "—but is never at home in his dreamed-of France, where he has come from his home in Nablus to study medicine. His French isn't quite perfect, not at first, which occasions an odd thought: "What if, since by the same token one could not afford ambiguity, everything also became more direct?" Things happen directly enough that he's soon enfolded in various dramas acted out by the good people of Montpellier. Midhat is a philosophically inclined soul who, as his yearned-for Jeannette remarks, is wont "to rely on what other people have said" in the countless books he's read. Like Zhivago, he is aware of events but somehow apart from them. When he returns to Nablus at a time when European Jews are heeding Herzl's call and moving to Palestine, he finds the city divided not just by the alignments of social class, but also by a new politics: "We must resist all of the Jews," insists a neighbor of Midhat's, advocating a militant solution that others think should be directed at the British colonizers. Hammad sometimes drifts into the didactic in outlining an exceedingly complex history, but she does so with a poet's eye for detail, writing, for instance, of Nablus' upper-class women, who "grow fat among cushions and divert their vigour into childbirth and playing music, and siphon what remained into promulgating rumors about their rivals." The years pass, and Midhat weathers change, illness, madness, and a declining command of French, seeking and finding love and family: At the end, he announces, "When I look at my life…I see a whole list of mistakes. Lovely, beautiful mistakes. I wouldn't change them."
Closely observed and elegantly written: an overstuffed story that embraces decades and a large cast of characters without longueurs.
Praise for The Parisian
WINNER OF THE 2019 PALESTINE BOOK AWARD
A New York Times Notable Book of 2019
One of Amazon's Best Books of 2019
A 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Selection
One of Vogue's Best Novels of 2019
An April IndieNext Selection
One of Lit Hub's Ultimate Best Books of 2019
One of Lit Hub's 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages
“Dazzling… A deeply imagined historical novel with none of the usual cobwebs of the genre… The Parisian has an up-close immediacy and stylistic panache… that are all the more impressive coming from a London-born writer still in her 20s… Exquisite.”—New York Times Book Review
“Assured and captivating… Ms. Hammad’s acute evocation of place and personality ensures that we are never lost… This agile writer sets us firmly in place, fixing our attention on intersecting lives.”—Wall Street Journal
“Reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, 27-year-old Isabella Hammad’s epic debut novel surpasses both in its scope.”—New York
“Stunning…a lush rendering of Palestinian life a century ago under the British mandate and a sumptuous epic about the enduring nature of love.”—Vogue
"Hammad uses the features of historical novels to cut through the familiar dichotomies of West and Near East, placing her protagonist in a rich web of families, political intrigues, and cultural exchanges, and subtly reconfiguring the literary tropes of 'home' and 'abroad.'"—New Yorker
“Epic… Because the book takes place in the complicated time and spaces that it does, the narrative grapples with sociopolitical concerns as well as it does the intimate, human ones. It sweeps you along.”—Vanity Fair
“[A] lush historical epic with echoes of Stendhal.”—O Magazine
“Lavish, leisurely and immersive… The Parisian comes across as both old-fashioned and modern-minded…. Ms. Hammad's command of the broad picture and the filigree detail alike makes this paradoxical tone succeed. One of Midhat's French friends disdains the small stuff since he “was an architect, not a carpenter.” Ms. Hammad knows, and triumphantly shows, that a novelist of vision must be both.”—Economist
“Remarkably accomplished… Hammad is a natural storyteller. She sustains tension and suspends revelation skillfully, and interweaves character and theme, the global and the local, with the assurance of a much more experienced author. The writing is deeply humane, its wide vision combined with poised restraint… The Parisian teems with riches – love, war, betrayal and madness – and marks the arrival of a bright new talent.”—Guardian
“One of the most ambitious first novels to have appeared in years… Written in soulful, searching prose, it’s a jam-packed epic… Hammad is a natural social novelist with an ear for lively dialogue as well as an ability to illuminate psychological interiority… Hammad is a writer of startling talent – and The Parisian has the rhythm of life.”—Observer
“Hammad has an exquisite control on her subject: this is precise writing, measured, and careful… Much of the pleasure of the book is to be found in Hammad’s often strikingly clear, original imagery … She also provides many canny shifts in focus, from a cinematic, establishing wide-shots of a location, deftly sketched, to zooming in on the tiniest, most intimate detail …It is Hammad’s sustaining of both perspectives, the minutiae that make up an individual life and the macro political upheavals that change a country forever, that makes The Parisian so impressive.”—Independent
"[A] dazzling debut... every page a vibrant pleasure to read." —LitHub
“Isabella Hammad shows rare maturity, both in her marshaling of a huge cast of characters and in her ability to illuminate such a politically charged period of history without didacticism or literary showboating.”—Mail on Sunday
“Sumptuous and sharply observed – an old-school novel to lost yourself in.”—Metro
“It's hard to believe this sweeping, sophisticated historical novel is Isabella Hammad's debut — Hammad is truly a talent to watch.”—Refinery29
“Hammad is an ambitious, sensitive, and abundantly talented writer… An exciting new voice in literature.”—Omnivoracious
“A triumph… A big, bold love story nestled within a powerful drama about the centuries-old Palestinian struggle for independence.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“In her exceptional debut, Hammad taps into the satisfying slow-burn style of classic literature with a storyline that captures both the heart and the mind….Richly textured prose drives the novel’s spellbinding themes of the ebb and flow of cultural connections and people who struggle with love, familial responsibilities, and personal identity. This is an immensely rewarding novel that readers will sink into and savor.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An assured debut novel… closely observed and elegantly written.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A hugely accomplished historical sweep of a book… a novel of immense skill and confidence.”—Guardian
“The Parisian is a gripping historical novel, a poignant romance, and a revelatory family epoch. Above all, it is a generous gift. There is a kind of joy that can hold not only pleasure, but struggle, and even sadness. This novel tells that kind of joyful story, and evokes that kind of joy in the reader.”—Jonathan Safran Foer
“The Parisian is a sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful. It is realism in the tradition of Flaubert and Stendhal – everything that happens feels not so much imagined as ordained. That this remarkable historical epic should be the debut of a writer in her mid-twenties seems impossible, yet it's true. Isabella Hammad is an enormous talent and her book is a wonder.”—Zadie Smith
“The Parisian is extraordinary—wise, ambitious, and lavishly rewarding. With luminous prose and rare compassion, Isabella Hammad offers her readers an absorbing story of war and identity, of love and independence, of hope and history. It’s an astonishing novel, heralding the arrival of a major talent.”—Bret Anthony Johnston
“The Parisian is a lushly imagined, beautifully written, expansive powerhouse of a debut. Isabella Hammad is a great new voice.”—Nathan Englander
"An exquisite, intricate and wise novel. I was utterly gripped from the first page until the last. This sweeping, historical epic marks the arrival of a wonderfully gifted author. Isabella Hammad is a marvel and The Parisian is an unforgettable read."—Irenosen Okojie
“With masterful lyricism and unflinching insight, The Parisian captures the personal passion and political violence of a nascent nation’s struggle for independence. Hammad has written a profound and intoxicating epic, brimming with unexpected, vivid imagery and unforgettable characters. Hers is a fresh voice of the first order.”—Bradford Morrow
“A model of what the short story can do…[A] most ingenious and openhearted work.”—David Gates on Isabella Hammad’s “Mr. Can’aan,” winner of the 2018 Plimpton Prize
