First published 2025
Raja always believed everything his mother told him—every single story, no matter how outlandish. Growing up in Beirut, he cataloged her tales like scientific specimens: miraculous encounters, impossible histories, family legends that shifted with each retelling. But when Raja decides to verify her most spectacular claims, he discovers a labyrinth of fabrication that threatens to unravel everything he understands about his family, his heritage, and the very nature of storytelling itself. As he tracks down distant relatives, old photographs, and fragmentary records, Raja confronts a central question: Does the emotional truth of a story matter more than its factual accuracy? His investigation becomes a delicate dance between loving devotion and ruthless fact-checking, with each revelation more startling than the last.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, magical-realism, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Beirut
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
282 pages · Kindle Edition · Grove Press