Mama Hissa's Mice

From the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world that NPR calls rich and resonant. Growing up together in the Surra section of central Kuwait, Katkout, Fahd, and Sadiq share neither ethnic origin nor religious denominationonly friendship and a rage against the unconscionable sectarian divide turning their lives into war-zone rubble. To lay bare the ugly truths, they form the protest group Fuadas Kids. Their righteous transgressions have made them targets of both Sunni and Shia extremists. Theyve also elicited the concern of Fahds grandmother, Mama Hissa, a story-spinning font of piety, wisdom, superstition, and dire warnings, who cautions them that should they anger God, the sky will surely fall. Then one day, after an attack on his neighborhood leaves him injured, Katkout regains consciousness. His friends are nowhere to be found. Inundated with memories of his past, Katkout begins a search for them in a world that has become unrecognizable but not forsaken. Snaking through decades of Kuwaiti history well into a cataclysmic twenty-first century, Mama Hissas Mice is a harrowing, emotional, and caustic novel of rebellion. It also speaks to the universal struggle of finding ones identity and a reason to go on, even after the sky has fallen.