Country of Origin

"Azim's evocative debut...gradually reveal[s] hidden layers of the story, enriching her characters and illuminating the heart of a country and people. The result is insightful and nuanced." -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Country of Origin is a rich, character-driven novel about personhood, enduring love, and immense grief." -FOREWORD REVIEWS, starred review

"Lyrical, piercing, and powerful." -LARA PRESCOTT

"Dalia Azim's luminous Country of Origin is a complex and moving portrait of a family reshaped by a young woman's determination to change the course of her life. Tender and wise, this novel explores the steep costs of loyalty, betrayal, and revolution-and the tenacity of love. A transporting debut." -KIRSTIN VALDEZ QUADE, author of The Five Wounds

"Evocative and moving, Country of Origin shows the struggles of two families caught up in the tumult of recent history. Love, loss, betrayal, migration, all of these are deftly explored in this fine first novel. Dalia Azim has given us a true and powerful story of the ties that bind and the ties that break, and our endless negotiation between the two." -BEN FOUNTAIN, author of Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution

"I picked this book up, not expecting the mystery, courage, and riveting adventure I would find in its pages. I put it down three days later, changed as the best books change you: stronger, and of wider, wilder vision. Among the best novels I've read in years." -DEB OLIN UNFERTH, author of Barn 8

"A novel of immense power, Country of Origin is an intergenerational epic that explores how one family's secrets and traumas interweave with political and social upheavals in transformative ways. In any year, Dalia Azim's gripping, lyrical debut would be an event. In this moment, it is essential. This book is a revelation."

-MARY HELEN SPECHT, author of Migratory Animals

"Breathtaking and memorable, Country of Origin is the kind of brilliant novel that breaks you open and puts you back together by the last page."

-S. KIRK WALSH, author of The Elephant of Belfast

"A buoyant debut which leaps in brilliant arcs, Dalia Azim's Country of Origin carries the reader across history, over vast geographies, and always lands solidly in character. It is a narrative that runs on compassion, inviting us to care not just about the words, but about the world. I can still taste the food, feel the heat of the flames, and hear the call to prayer."

-KIRK LYNN, author of Rules for Werewolves