Hala Alyan

The Arsonists’ City follows the Nasr family, whose members are scattered across Beirut and the United States but remain connected by their shared history and their ancestral home in Lebanon. When Idris decides to sell the Beirut house following his father’s death, his wife, Mazna, and their three adult children return to prevent the sale. Their reunion brings buried secrets, old romantic entanglements, and unresolved resentments to the surface. Through shifting timelines, Alyan reveals how the family came together and how migration, political conflict, and personal choices gradually shaped their relationships. Each family member has developed a different understanding of home, belonging, and responsibility, creating tensions that threaten to pull them apart. Against the backdrop of Lebanon’s turbulent history, the novel explores intergenerational trauma, cultural identity, and the complicated bonds that connect people to their families and places of origin.

Salt Houses follows several generations of the Palestinian Yacoub family as political upheaval repeatedly forces them to leave their homes and rebuild their lives elsewhere. Beginning in Nablus in the 1960s, the story traces the family’s experiences through the Six-Day War, the displacement caused by regional conflicts, and the subsequent lives of their descendants across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Each generation inherits a complicated relationship with Palestine, balancing memories of a lost homeland with the practical demands of creating a future in unfamiliar places. As family members develop different ideas about belonging, identity, and home, their relationships are shaped by both shared history and personal choices. Alyan explores the intergenerational effects of displacement, revealing how exile can become part of family identity even for those who have never experienced their ancestral homeland themselves.