Honey Bar
“Kirkus”: (Starred Review): “. . . Jarrar is a funny, incisive writer, and she’s positively heroic in her refusal to employ easy sentimentality or cheap pathos. . . . A coming-of-age story that’s both singular and universal—an outstanding debut.”
Q&A and book signing.
Free ($5 Suggested Donation)
Co-presented with the English Department at Normandale Community College.
“A Map of Home,” a novel about a childhood in the Middle East and America, from an exciting new voice. Randa Jarrar’s fresh, funny and fearless debut novel chronicles the coming-of-age of Nidali, one of the most unique and irrepressible narrators in contemporary fiction. Born in 1970s Boston, the rebellious Nidali—whose name is a feminization of the word “struggle”—soon moves to a very different life in Kuwait. There the family leads a mildly eccentric middle-class existence—until the Iraqi invasion drives them first to Egypt and then to Texas. With echoes of Jhumpa Lahiri and Marjane Satrapi, this critically acclaimed debut novel is set to capture the hearts of everyone who’s ever wondered what their own map of home might look like.
Randa Jarrar is the author of the critically acclaimed novel “A Map of Home,” which was published in half a dozen languages and won a Hopwood Award, an Arab-American Book Award, and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes and Noble Review. Her work has appeared in “Ploughshares,” “Five Chapters,” “Guernica,” “the Oxford American,” “the New York Times Magazine,” “the Utne Reader,” Salon.com, and “the Progressive.” She has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Hedgebrook, Caravansarai, and Eastern Frontier, and was chosen to take part in Beirut39, which celebrates the 39 most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40.