-
Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Aisha Abdel Gawad
Book Reviewed by:Set in the Arab immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan.
It's the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents' roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, whose mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance.
Meanwhile, outside the family's apartment, a storm is brewing in Bay Ridge. A raid on a local business sparks a protest that brings the Arab community together, and a senseless act of violence threatens to tear them apart. Everyone's motives are called into question as an alarming sense of disquiet pervades the neighborhood. With everything spiraling out of control, how will Amira and Lina know who they can trust?
A gorgeously written, intimate family story and a polyphonic portrait of life under the specter of Islamophobia, Between Two Moons challenges the reader to interrogate their own assumptions, asking questions of allegiance to faith, family, and community, and what it means to be a young Muslim in America.
Both sisters, in a way, are searching for the same thing: themselves. They want to escape Bay Ridge and the pressure "to ditch [the] cutoffs and halter tops for a nice, modest abaya." Yet they struggle with a sense of fidelity to their family and culture, not wanting to abandon them as they feel increasing scrutiny from "those people, out there in the world, who didn't know us and despised us." Gawad challenges readers to recall their own teenage years, to remember the fight for self-discovery and how directionless it feels to occupy that strange realm between adolescence and adulthood, and she explores what it means to be a Muslim youth in America today...continued
Full Review
(618 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Abby Edgecumbe).
Aisha Abdel Gawad's debut novel, Between Two Moons, follows twin sisters Amira and Lina as they navigate self-discovery during the celebration of Ramadan. Ramadan is a month-long Islamic tradition characterized by spiritual devotion practiced through prayer, fasting, charity and other activities. It is considered one of the holiest times of year, and includes Laylat al-Qadr, known as the night that God revealed the Qur'an, the central text of Islam, to the prophet Muhammad. Ramadan is celebrated during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and in most places in the world falls at a different time each year due to an approximate 11-day difference between the Gregorian calendar, which adheres to solar months (currently used by the ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Between Two Moons, try these:
by Amira Ghenim
Published 2025
A finalist for the 2021 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a compelling saga of two families that illuminates the lives of women in modern Tunisia.
by Jonathan Escoffery
Published 2023
A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami, and introduces a generational storyteller.
Happy Land
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams
The Muslim community in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge is a world we hardly know, filled with Arab American women who have long been neglected in the white pages of American Letters. In Aisha Gawad's stylistically superb debut these women are seen, heard, and made known. Aisha's elegant and fearless prose introduces us to Amira and Lina, post 9/11 twin sisters who are scarred witnesses of the distrust, fear, and racism Arab Americans face every day. Yet, they soar. Amira, torn between leaving Brooklyn while staying loyal to her Egyptian heritage, to 'not to be like them—those people, out there in the world, who didn't know us and despised us.' And rebellious Lina, who like Icarus, just might have soared too high towards the violence of men. See Something, Say Something? In this doubtless classic, Aisha Gawad has seen many things, and her bold and dazzling prose illuminates everything.
