Wild Mulberries (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781566567008)

Sarah is on the brink of adulthood in her village in the mountains of Lebanon in the 1930s, a world hesitating on the verge of change. Her father the shaykh is uninterested in anything but the silkworms he's always raised; her conservative aunt worries only about the family's reputation, fearing that Sarah will take after her mother, who ran away twelve years ago and has been unheard of since. Sarah's brother dreams of going abroad, but each year finds himself still trapped in the family business. Around her the village--Druze and Christian, Lebanese and English--grows poorer, its traditions no longer able to sustain it. Sarah's hopes for the future have come to rely either on marriage, or finding the mother she can't remember.

In Younes's textured, lyrical prose, the story of one young woman's coming of age becomes a meditation on a nation's hardship, on home and freedom, hope and loss. Younes brings to intense life this lost world and the women at its center, whose lives have disappeared from history, from their own grasp.

Author: Iman Humaydan
ISBN-10: 1566567009
ISBN-13: 9781566567008
Publisher: Interlink Books
Language: English
Published: 05/01/2008
Pages: 224
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.37lbs
Size: 8.03h x 5.38w x 0.40d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2008 pg. 622