I'll Tell You When I'm Home :A Memoir
I'll Tell You When I'm Home :A Memoir
hardback
Published:
4 September, 2025
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Description
One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 and Electric Lit's Best Nonfiction of 2025
At first, Hala’s baby is the size of a poppyseed. Then a grain of rice, then a lime. After years of trying for a baby, Hala watches from afar as her daughter grows in the body of another woman, in another country.
Hala is not just awaiting news from the surrogate. She also holds her breath as Palestine and Lebanon, her estranged homelands, are under fire. She remembers family stories of grandmothers mapping their lives through a tangle of borders; of eradicated villages, invading armies and places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men who left, women who stayed, and the legacies passed down from one to another.
Stunningly lyrical and unflinchingly honest, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unravelling and becoming, of homelands lost and reimagined, and of the intimate ways we learn to make a life when the ground beneath us shifts.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9781849251006 |
| ISBN10 | 1849251002 |
| Number Of Pages | 272 |
| Item Weight | 400 g |
| Product Dimensions | 135 x 216 x 26 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Saqi Books |
| Format | hardback |
Media Reviews
'[A] gorgeous, lyrical memoir ... I’ll Tell You When I’m Home shows the power of even a single narrative to resist the deliberate erasure of a people and their homeland, the violence of colonisation.'
* The New York Times *'Alyan’s poetic prose encapsulates miles in each sentence and paragraph; joyfully, revisiting a passage is another chance at uncovering a new gift. Her nonfiction narrative voice allows the poet in her to shine, especially as each chapter is told in a series of short glimpses weaving together past and present, the old and the new Hala. ... With I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, Alyan has created a record, a story to communicate with those departed and those new to life. In the process, her work is an antidote for others searching for a home they never asked to lose.'
* Chicago Review of Books *‘A poignant exploration of her tumultuous path to parenthood, identity, and displacement … The memoir unfolds like the tale of Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights, where Hala becomes the ‘waiting woman,’ reckoning with all the truths of her life before stepping into motherhood … a stunning kaleidoscope of vignettes … More than a story of motherhood and exile, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a testimony of everything at once … a moving tribute to the strength of those forced from their homelands and ruthlessly exploited, as well as a celebration of women’s determination to survive and thrive.'
* New Arab *GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American writer and poet. Her novels include The Arsonists' City and Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a Chautauqua Prize finalist. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.