The Parisian

A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey & romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.

Midhat Kamal is the son of a wealthy textile merchant from Nablus, a town in Ottoman Palestine. A dreamer, a romantic, an aesthete, in 1914 he leaves to study medicine in France, & falls in love. When Midhat returns to Nablus to find it under British rule, & the entire region erupting with nationalist fervor, he must find a way to cope with his conflicting loyalties & the expectations of his community. The story of Midhat’s life develops alongside the idea of a nation, as he & those close to him confront what it means to strive for independence in a world that seems on the verge of falling apart.

Against a landscape of political change that continues to define the Middle East, The Parisian explores questions of power & identity, enduring love, & the uncanny ability of the past to disrupt the present. Lush & immersive, & devastating in its power, The Parisian is an elegant, richly-imagined debut from a dazzling new voice in fiction.

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Isabella Hammad was born in London. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, the New York Times, Conjunctions, & elsewhere. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction & a 2019 O. Henry Prize. Her first novel The Parisian (2019) won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, & a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, & has received literary fellowships from MacDowell, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, & the Columbia University Institute for Ideas & Imagination.