Book Description
“A sprawling tale of love, family, duty, war, and displacement. It is above all a stinging indictment of the ill-fated war in Iraq.” —Khaled Hosseini, #1 New York Times–bestselling author The bright and driven daughter of a Boston-area Irish-Arab family, Rita Khoury charts herself an ambitious path through Harvard to one of the best newspapers in the country. She is posted in cosmopolitan Beirut and dates a handsome Palestinian would-be activist. But when she is assigned to cover the America-led invasion of Baghdad in 2003, she finds herself unprepared for the warzone. Her lifeline is her interpreter and fixer Nabil al-Jumaili, an equally restless young man whose dreams have been restricted by life in a deteriorating dictatorship, not to mention his own seemingly impossible desires. As the war tears Iraq apart, personal betrayal and the horrors of conflict force Rita and Nabil out of the country and into twisting, uncertain fates. What lies in wait will upend their lives forever, shattering their own notions of what they’re entitled to in a grossly unjust world. Epic in scope, by turns satirical and heartbreaking, and speaking sharply to America’s current moment, Correspondents is a whirlwind story about displacement from one’s own roots, the violence America promotes both abroad and at home, and the resilience that allows families to remake themselves and endure even the most shocking upheavals. “[An] emotionally resonant, time-hopping page turner . . . Explores immigration, the effects of U.S. intervention, and the long arc of war.” —Huffington Post “An exploration of family, identity, and the price of war.” —Newsday “A surprisingly moving war novel alert to global violence and politics but thriving on the character level.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
