Description
Set between London and Baghdad, Saleem Haddad's brilliant second novel is a sweeping, multigenerational tale of art, exile, memory, and the enduring legacies of war.
In the summer of 2014, three long estranged Iraqi-British sisters are pulled back into each other's orbit by the rediscovery of their late father's long-lost paintings. Beautiful, elusive Zainab; embittered, practical Mediha; and headstrong, queer Ishtar each lay claim to their father's legacy--an artistic and personal inheritance entwined with betrayal, exile, and a homeland they no longer recognize.
As the sisters fight to preserve, erase, or repurpose the past, Zainab's estranged son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by trauma and heartbreak, returns to the family fold. With the reemergence of buried memories comes a reckoning, and the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart.
Spanning continents and decades--from 1950s Baghdad to contemporary London, from the Tigris River to Yemeni refugee camps--Floodlines is at once an intimate family drama and, in its scope, a modern epic. It is a rare novel that bridges the historic and the immediate and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to belong, to create, to endure.
Author: Saleem Haddad
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 02/24/2026
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.80w x 2.00d
ISBN13: 9798889661658
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Family Life | Multigenerational
- Fiction | Sagas
- Fiction | World Literature | Middle East | General