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A review by elementarymydear
Daughters of the Nile by Zahra Barri
5.0
Multi-generational story about radical activism, feminism, religion, self-identity and queerness? Yes yes and yes again!!
The book follows three women in different generations of the same family. For most of the book, Nadia – the youngest of the three – felt quite separate from the stories of her aunt and her grandmother, and as the story went on it became clear why that was. Both Fatiha and Yasminah are activists, campaigning for women’s rights and gay rights respectively in the Middle East. They each came up against their own struggles, both in their personal and their public lives, as they put themselves in increasingly vulnerable positions to fight for equality.
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I will admit that, for the first half of the book, I was getting increasingly frustrated by Nadia’s storyline. She comes from this line of strong-willed, tenacious feminists, and it felt at the start like she took her own position in the world for granted as she drifted through life. I’m glad I stuck with it though because it made her growth in the second half of the book all the better! I was cheering her on as she made her first major steps in fixing the wrongs she saw in the world, and my heart went out to her as she confronted her own trauma.
In the end, she starts to reframe how she sees the people around her, reassessing the assumptions she had made about her family and making discoveries about herself she never anticipated. There was a one-year-on epilogue which was the perfect way to show how far Nadia especially had come, and bring together the threads of the different characters.
The story constantly jumps between different times and places, and while this is something that I often find frustrating, in this book it felt like being given the different pieces of the puzzle out of order. By the end everything started to fall into place, as we got a very full picture of these characters’ lives.
As much as I knew I would enjoy this book, it went way beyond what I expected. Zahra Barri is a writer to watch, and I hope this book gets all the flowers it deserves!
I received a free copy for an honest review.
The book follows three women in different generations of the same family. For most of the book, Nadia – the youngest of the three – felt quite separate from the stories of her aunt and her grandmother, and as the story went on it became clear why that was. Both Fatiha and Yasminah are activists, campaigning for women’s rights and gay rights respectively in the Middle East. They each came up against their own struggles, both in their personal and their public lives, as they put themselves in increasingly vulnerable positions to fight for equality.
📚Blog📖YouTube📖Instagram📚
I will admit that, for the first half of the book, I was getting increasingly frustrated by Nadia’s storyline. She comes from this line of strong-willed, tenacious feminists, and it felt at the start like she took her own position in the world for granted as she drifted through life. I’m glad I stuck with it though because it made her growth in the second half of the book all the better! I was cheering her on as she made her first major steps in fixing the wrongs she saw in the world, and my heart went out to her as she confronted her own trauma.
In the end, she starts to reframe how she sees the people around her, reassessing the assumptions she had made about her family and making discoveries about herself she never anticipated. There was a one-year-on epilogue which was the perfect way to show how far Nadia especially had come, and bring together the threads of the different characters.
The story constantly jumps between different times and places, and while this is something that I often find frustrating, in this book it felt like being given the different pieces of the puzzle out of order. By the end everything started to fall into place, as we got a very full picture of these characters’ lives.
As much as I knew I would enjoy this book, it went way beyond what I expected. Zahra Barri is a writer to watch, and I hope this book gets all the flowers it deserves!
I received a free copy for an honest review.