The main tension seems to be Idris’s pigheaded insistence that the house be sold-his children (and even his wife, who has always claimed to hate the house and the city) protest. The basic plot of the novel is simple: Mazna and Idris, two Middle Eastern immigrants who have lived in California for forty years, return with their three adult children, Ava, Mimi, and Najla-who all live in different places-to Idris’s childhood home in Beirut, where they plan to throw a belated memorial to the family patriarch and sell the house. Alyan honestly and genuinely examines the complex forces at play in each place’s culture while also fully acknowledging how confusing, equivocal, and unknowable they can be. With seemingly effortless confidence, Alyan hops back and forth between decades and continents, investigating the social, political, and gender-based tensions experienced in California, New York, Beirut, and Damascus. The sheer scope of Hala Alyan’s novel, The Arsonists’ City, published in March, is astounding.
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