Four Cities

Following her mesmerizing debut collection Atrium, Hala Alyan offers a sustaining and luminous meditation on love and war in Four Cities. Baghdad, New York, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Tripoli, Detroit and Paris are just names on maps, 'for when maps fold and countries vanish it is just you and the dust you carry on your skin.' These gritty, volatile communities dissolve into dreamscapes, redolent with lemons, dazzled with snow, awake to conversation and kisses. The sky is always open for possibilities: fireworks, moonlight, the call to prayer, dandelions parachuting through the air. What a splendid majestic if troubled world we find ourselves in love in. D.A. Powell, author of Chronic and Cocktails