Salt Houses
Hala Alyan
A sweeping debut novel following three generations of a Palestinian family from Nablus to Kuwait, Beirut, Paris, and Boston — winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding in Nablus, Salma reads the young woman’s future in the dregs of a coffee cup — and keeps what she sees to herself. The Six-Day War of 1967 soon scatters the family: Salma is forced from her home, Alia’s brother is drawn into the armed struggle, and Alia and her husband build a life in Kuwait City, only to lose everything again when Saddam Hussein invades in 1990. From Nablus to Kuwait, Beirut, Paris, and Boston, Hala Alyan’s debut novel follows three generations of one Palestinian family through repeated uprooting — and through the quieter displacements of assimilation, memory, and the silences the elders keep about what was lost.
Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, Salt Houses is a portrait of the Nakba’s long aftermath told at the scale of the family, where history arrives as inheritance.
About the author
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American novelist, poet, and clinical psychologist based in New York. Her poetry collections include Atrium and The Twenty-Ninth Year; her second novel, The Arsonists’ City, was published in 2021.
Details
- Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017
- Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award
- ISBN 9780544912588
The edition
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