Ya Maryam by Sinan Antoon

Two conflicting perspectives from members of a Christian Iraqi family brought together under one roof in Baghdad by the country's circumstances. Youssef, a solitary man in the autumn of his life, refuses to leave the house he built and lived in for half a century to immigrate. He clings to the threads of hope and the memories of a happy past. Maha, a young woman whose life was ravaged by sectarian violence, finds her family displaced and separated. She lives as a refugee in her own country, residing in Youssef's house, waiting with her husband for the migration date from a homeland that seems not to want her. The novel unfolds over a single day, weaving individual and collective memory narratives with reality, colliding hope with destiny when an event changes the characters' lives forever. The novel raises bold and challenging questions about the situation of minorities in Iraq, exploring the search of one character for Iraq's past while another tries to escape Iraq's present.