Crescent

by Diana Abu-Jaber

Overview

"Abu-Jaber's voluptuous prose features insights into the Arab American community that are wisely, warmly depicted."—San Francisco Chronicle

Sirine, the heroine of this "deliciously romantic romp" (Vanity Fair) is thirty-nine, never married, and living in the Arab-American community of Los Angeles. She has a passion for cooking and works contentedly in a Lebanese restaurant, while her storytelling uncle and her saucy boss, Umm Nadia, believe she should be trying harder to find a husband. One day Hanif, a handsome professor of Arabic literature, an Iraqi exile, comes to the restaurant. Sirine falls in love and finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about Hanif, as well as her own torn identity as an Arab-American.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393066692
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/17/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	745,026
File size:	591 KB

About the Author

Diana Abu-Jaber is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

What People are Saying About This

Sena Jeter Naslund

Abu-Jaber affirms the precious fragility of life, love, family, and the human community in meaningful ways.

Sigrid Nunez

It is a story about how to cook and how to eat, and how to live in the new country. And, like all good novels, it is about how to tell a story.

Connie May Fowler

Lush, poignant, and searing...unfolds with all the startling beauty of a hidden garden.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Please read this book. Diana Abu-Jaber is a high-spirited, magnificently graceful storyteller, a poet of deliciously fluted fiction, character, and culture, and her work is needed now, now, now.

Whitney Otto

Romantic, whimsical and wonderful in every way, being both sensuous and smart. I want to hang out all day at Nadia's Cafe.

Editorial Reviews

"A story that unfolds beautifully, as lightly and naturally as a roll of silk."

The Nation

"Abu-Jaber is a high-spirited, magnificently graceful storyteller, a poet of deliciously fluted fiction, character, and culture."

Naomi Shihab Nye

"It is a story about how to cook and how to eat, and how to live in the new country. And, like all good novels, it is about how to tell a story."

Sigrid Nunez

"Crescent is a rich, delicious concoction that has you rooting for the star-crossed lovers."

The Baltimore Sun - John Muncie

"[A] lovely tale...an urgent mix of Scheherazade-style storytelling and treatise on the loneliness of exile."

Oregonian - Andrea Spencer

"Gorgeously written and deeply imagined, this novel is both a fable and a plea—a book that weaves a hypnotic, lasting spell."

Book Magazine - Beth Kephart

Diana Abu-Jaber has written a haunting and fanciful story about an Iraqi community in Los Angeles. Sirine, who is half-Arab and a chef at a Lebanese restaurant, falls hopelessly in love with Han, an Iraqi exile and professor at a local university. Abu-Jaber captures the essence of the local color and distant culture as the two worlds collide, and Nike Doukas reads the parts perfectly, communicating the drama and uncertainty of new love. Abu-Jaber weaves into the novel a fanciful folktale of a mother’s search for her wandering son, told by Sirine’s uncle-turned-surrogate-father. Marcelo Tubert tells the tale with a voice full of wonder, humor, and magic as he follows the pair’s exploits around the world. Together, the two narrators cast a spell, drawing the listener into an amazing world. H.L.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

FEB/MAR 04 - AudioFile