Staff Pick
Sahar Mustafah’s novel opens with the principal at an Islamic school on the morning of a school shooting. In flashback, we learn about the principal’s life leading up to that moment: her difficult home life and her religious awakening. The Beauty of Your Face is a heartrending exploration of alienation and acceptance. Mustafah’s compelling and clear-eyed prose is rich with detail, and the result is a beautiful and moving experience. Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Award-winning essayist and poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips presents a bracing renewal of civic poetry in Living Weapon.
. . . and we'd do this again
And again and again, without ever
Knowing we were the weapon ourselves,
Stronger than steel, story, and hydrogen.
-- from Even Homer Nods
A revelation, a shoring up, a transposition: Rowan Ricardo Phillips's Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light honed in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere; four NYPD officers enter a cellphone store; concrete sidewalks hang overhead. Here, in his third collection of poems, Phillips offers us ruminations on violins and violence, on hatred, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. Living Weapon reveals to us the limitations of our vocabulary, that our platitudes are not enough for the brutal times in which we find ourselves. But still, our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as they are an indictment. Couched in language both wry and ample, Living Weapon is a piercing addition from a "virtuoso poetic voice" (Granta).
Review
"In his dazzling third collection, Phillips (Heaven) explores social ills while celebrating poetry’s ability to provide solace and sense during times of upheaval . . . Phillips’s latest is lyrical, imaginative, and steeped in a keen understanding of current events." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Phillips’s determination to push beyond irony into affirmation is an audacious gesture – 'resilient as bioluminescence,' these poems of 'song and pain' announce a bold new talent." David Wheatley, The Guardian
Review
"The Beauty of Your Face is a striking and stirring debut, one that reaches its hands straight into the fire. Sahar Mustafah writes with wisdom and grace about the unthinkable, the unspeakable, and the unspoken." Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Great Believers
Review
"A masterpiece, a moving account of our community, and one of the best renderings of a devout Muslim woman’s inner life and aspiration. Sahar Mustafah’s descriptions and attention to detail are seamless and cinematic." Khaled Mattawa, author of Tocqueville and MacArthur Fellowship recipient
Review
"Sahar Mustafah writes with a grace and precision that shows a deep understanding for the ways trauma can distort a life. The Beauty of Your Face is a richly empathetic work about the power of faith, family, and love." Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of We Cast a Shadow
Synopsis
One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Beauty of Your Face is “a story of outsiders coming together in surprising and uplifting ways” (New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice).
The Beauty of Your Face tells a uniquely American story in powerful, evocative prose. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter—radicalized by the online alt-right—attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories, and into a profound and “moving” (Bustle) exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals.
About the Author
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. Her short story collection Code of the West won the 2016 Willow Books Prize for Fiction. She lives and teaches high school students outside of Chicago.