First published 2022
Salama Kassab once studied pharmacy and lived with her parents and brother in Syria. The freedom protests changed everything. Now she works at a hospital in Homs, treating wounded civilians who arrive each day. Her parents are gone. Her brother is gone. Only her pregnant sister-in-law Layla remains. Salama wants to escape Syria before Layla gives birth, but she feels torn between fleeing and staying loyal to her country. Her fear has grown so intense that she imagines a companion named Khawf who follows her everywhere, urging her to leave. Military attacks and bombing raids threaten the hospital daily. Salama questions her own moral choices as the violence escalates around her. When she meets a boy she was meant to encounter before the war began, she starts reconsidering her plans to leave. Salama must choose between her survival and her commitment to what she now understands is not just war, but revolution.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, war, contemporary
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Syria, Homs
Period: Freedom Protests
432 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury Publishing
Content warnings: death, violence, war