As a young man growing up under communism in South Yemen, Imran finds
himself drawn to Hawiya, the daughter of a high-ranking official in the
Marxist party. He departs Aden, the seaport city of his childhood, to
study literature in Paris. Years later he returns to Yemen and meets
Hawiya again--only to find that she is now a niqab-wearing Salafist,
calling on people to join the conservative Islamist movement.
Set against the backdrop of Yemeni history, Habib Abdelrab Sarori's
Arabic Booker long-listed novel traces one man's lifelong search for
love and his own political ideology.