Him, Me, Muhammad Ali

People magazine gave Jarrar’s novel four stars, calling it an extraordinary debut.

Jarrar's stories grapple with love, loss, displacement, and survival in a collection that moves seamlessly between realism and fable, history and the present. With humor, irony, and boundless imagination, Jarrar brings to life a memorable cast of characters, many of them "accidental transients" — a term for migratory birds who have gone astray — seeking their circuitous routes back home.

“Wow! These vibrant, funny, earthy, and above all, yearning (for love, for family, for home) stories are a revelation. Jarrar combines the invention of Calvino, the sprung style of Paley, the poetic imagery of Babel — heck, some of the stories come on like a female, Arab American Junot Díaz! But that mash-up isn’t mere stylistic exuberance; it’s a restless, relentless and deeply affecting effort to forge identity out of fragments, to make a whole out of halves. These are the stories we need right now." Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl and The Ugliest House in the World

"With compelling themes of displacement and reinvention, these stories push boundaries — probing race, class, sexual identity, and family; the role of women in Arab and American culture; and much more. In this collection, mythology meets reality, and Jarrar’s palette spans the world....The thirteen stories in this collection blend humor with rage, wit with pathos. Jarrar presents an astonishing variety, each story as inventive as it is insightful. It’s a book for this oppressive electoral season, where presidential politics are ugly and destructive, and demagoguery is endeavoring to trample a core American truth: Our country’s strength derives from open borders. Jarrar is here with a correction." The Millions

"Jarrar’s characters are memorable, with experiences and observations that oscillate between deeply moving and riotously funny — often on the same page — and she expertly incorporates occasional moments of magical realism in this truly excellent short-story collection." New York Magazine

"Jarrar....manages to imbue her stories and characters with unabashed satire and biting language, melded with an expansive, imaginative geography....In this new, beautifully crafted ­collection she moves seamlessly from ­Istanbul to Sydney to ­Seattle, with stories featuring colourful characters from a variety of Arab ­backgrounds....This endearing book, and its vulnerable characters, indelibly leaves the reader with an intimate sense of love and loss." The National

"A subtle interrogation of class spanning multiple generations and an exploration of desire enlivened by a dash of magical realism." Kirkus Review

"Jarrar follows up her novel, A Map of Home, with a collection of stories depicting the lives of Arab women, ranging from hypnotic fables to gritty realism....Often witty and cutting, these stories transport readers and introduce them to a memorable group of women." Publishers Weekly

"[A] brave, bright, tell-it-like-it-is collection....Impressively varied in style and content, Jarrar’s collection is recommended for a wide range of ­readers." Library Journal

Randa Jarrar is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved to the U.S. after the first Gulf War. Her novel A Map of Home, was published in six languages and won a Hopwood Award, an Arab-American Book Award, and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes & Noble Review. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, Five Chapters, and other venues. She’s received fellowships and residencies from the Lannan Foundation at Marfa, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Hedgebrook, Caravansarai, and Eastern Frontier. In 2010, the Hay Festival and Beirut UNESCO’s world capital of the book named Jarrar one of the most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40.