Floodlines by Saleem Haddad

Publishes 12 February 
 
From the author of Guapa comes this sweeping, multi-generational novel that traces the fractured bonds between three sisters.
 
In the summer of 2014, three estranged sisters are drawn back into each other’s orbits through the discovery of their late father’s lost paintings.
 
As Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar lay claim to his legacy—an inheritance laced with exile, betrayal, and an Iraq they no longer recognise—Zainab’s son Nizar, a traumatized war correspondent, returns to the family fold.
 
As summer bleeds into autumn and the truth about the family paintings unfurls, Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar are forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore their family apart.
 
Spanning continents and decades, Floodlines grapples with legacy, memory, and family secrets, and charts the emotional and political aftershocks of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Inspired by Haddad’s family history, Floodlines is a contemporary Iraqi epic that explores family, queerness, and the disruptive legacies of (neo)colonialism in haunting, visceral prose.
 
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"Haddad’s writing is a searing meditation on hope. Floodlines is beautifully crafted, and breathtaking in scope and reach. It is a book that mourns Iraq and all the senseless violence its people and lands have been subjected to, while celebrating its art, richness, and commitment to life.” - Tareq Baconi 
 
"In asking what it means to make art, Floodlines manages to be cinematic and essayistic in the same breath. Above all, it manages to fuse the intimate subjectivity of disinheritance and displacement with unfolding history. An epic vindication."  - Youssef Rakha
 
"Haddad writes movingly about what we inherit, and places art at the heart of his exploration into how the tragedy of a country and the tragedy of a family live on the same canvas."  ― Michael Langan