For readers of Pachinko and Queenie, a funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women. Arabella gets an unexpected chance at love when she's thrust into a conflict and history she's tried to avoid all her life.
Zoya is playing matchmaker for her last unmarried granddaughter--introducing Arabella to the very eligible grandson of an old flame and stirring up buried family history.
Naya is keeping a secret from her family that will change all their lives.
Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqu cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic (that might garner international attention) in the West Bank. Her grandmother, Zoya, plots to make a match between her and Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster.
Arabella and Aziz's instant connection reminds Zoya of the passion she once felt for Aziz's grandfather, a man she desired desperately, even after her father arranged another husband for her. In turn, Zoya would later marry off her youngest daughter, Naya, who aspired to date the Jackson 5 and wasn't ready to be a wife or mother to Arabella at sixteen. Now that Naya's children are grown and she's arrived at an abrupt midlife crossroads, it's time to settle old scores...
With biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family's epic journey from fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. Too Soon joins the stories that seek to illuminate our shared history and ask, how can we set ourselves free?
Industry Reviews
“The novel, which opens in 2012, has all the beats of a romantic comedy—one that unfolds partly in the West Bank. . . . The ribald humor, the over-the-top-ness that Shamieh brings to describing this struggle, reminded me—surprisingly—of mid-century Jewish American writers, especially Philip Roth. . . . These women are all antiheroes of a sort . . . . Shakespeare would approve.” —Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic
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