Excerpt from The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Zakaria had fallen silent at that. He felt guilty and yet also unrepentant—how to apologize for the only truly good thing that'd ever happened to him?—which Idris had sniffed out like a dog. He'd called him a traitor.

"Not even a little plate?" his mother asks now, interrupting his thoughts. 

"I'm just not hungry," Zakaria repeats. To stave off further questions, he tries to appear absorbed in the soap opera that his sisters, sprawled on the large sofa, are watching. The three girls are younger than him, all unmarried, with large noses and dark curly hair. They are branches of the same tree, rooted and yet always apart from him.

He must fall asleep at some point.

Excerpted from The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan. Copyright © 2021 by Hala Alyan. Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.