This short, devastating novella unfolds in the voices of the members of
an Iraqi family at the time of the Iraq War, is a painfully personal and
coldly beautiful telling of the intimate tragedy of an honour killing.
The principal narrator is a young unmarried woman who realizes that she
is pregnant. She knows this means she will be killed by her elder
brother when he returns home that evening.
As the day inches towards its inevitable dénouement, the story of the
family unfolds, through vignettes in the voice of each family member: a
delicate courtship, snatched moments, reticence and frustration all
offering the sensation of what it is to be female or male in this
stifling world.
-May the Tigris Grieve for You denounces war, imperialism and toxic
religious practices as much as domestic patriarchy in this local form,
whose obsessive control of women is only one extreme of the worldwide
logic of power.
