A Woman Is No Man - Etaf Rum

A Woman Is No Man

By Etaf Rum

  • Release Date: 2019-03-05
  • Genre: Fiction & Literature
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 1,369 Ratings

Description

A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Fiction and Best Debut • BookBrowse's Best Book of the Year • A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of the Year • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year • A PopSugar Best Book of the Year All Written By Females • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March • A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer • A USA Today Best Book of the Week • A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel • A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month • A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month • A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors • An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2019

“Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum’s debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice.”   —Refinery 29

The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community.

"Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.”

Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear.

Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can’t help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man.

But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.

Reviews

  • amazing

    5
    By spilledlaughter
    absolutely amazing. enticing. a beautiful novel about pain, suffering, and resilience. i couldn’t put it down
  • Loved this book.

    5
    By 503traveler
    Well written and so very interesting. Thank you for sharing part of your world, Etaf Rum.
  • Amazing!

    5
    By Jam's I-phone
    This was such a wonderful book.
  • A Woman Is No Man

    5
    By lbster
    I loved this book because it was captivating to read about women who are trapped in their circumstances and are brave enough to speak out and overcome what they were made to feel about themselves. My heart would break with each beating and each sorrow over the birth of a baby girl! A must read!!!
  • Great read

    5
    By Mfasac
    What a great read!! I couldn’t put it down. This book was not on compelling but an eye open as to the lives of many women in different cultures!
  • Loved it

    4
    By susureads
    Its not a five star for me because of its confusing ending otherwise it was a lovely book
  • A woman is no man

    5
    By Kayedanielle
    Inspiring and moving. I could put it down!
  • Amazing

    5
    By Aliceinn can
    This author is truly gifted and from my home state of NC. I would recommend anyone to read this. I’m an employer at a childcare @littlemakersacademy. And I have Arabic - Muslim woman as employees and this really helped me to understand their backgrounds and put things into perspectives. Next time I work to encourage them I have a more understanding vantage point. After reading this I’m interested in the view point of the men, especially the abusers. Overall, the best book I’ve read in a while , I couldn’t put it down.
  • A Woman is No Man

    5
    By DKCMC
    Read in two sittings. Lovely writing and content so compelling. Characters clearly presented to point you can see them. Heartbreaking but difficult to imagine in American culture....yet, it exists on some level.
  • Is this a teen book? Feels like an R movie made PG friendly

    2
    By EnglishMajorProblems
    Prose was very basic, made it a speed read because there was no challenge to it. Some points in the plot were a bit saccharin - like going to the bookstore and talking to Sarah without being found out or even a threat of being found out. This could have been a much deeper, richer book from another author with the vocabulary to make it more complex and tense.

Comments