Country of Origin

February 1, 2022
An upper-class Egyptian teenager pursues romance and personal freedom following the 1952 uprising. Halah Ibrahim is 14 when Cairo goes up in flames. She watches it burn from the relative safety of her family's lavish home, guarded by the privilege of her father's military connections. As the family cook says, "The rich are always protected." Halah's schooling ends with the revolution and her parents' attempt to arrange her marriage to a much older man. Halah rebels, sneaking off in the night to marry Khalil, one of her father's military acquaintances, whom she barely knows. They travel to New York, where he'll attend medical school. "I had been so blas� about money my whole life," Halah says, not realizing the gravity of what she's done or the harshness of the existence that awaits her until she and Khalil try to forge a life together in Queens. They have a daughter, Amena, and Halah falls into patterns of negative, obsessive thought. Early descriptions of Halah's behavior seem like wild teenage defiance, but this is reframed after Halah goes missing in 1967 and other characters--Khalil, college-age Amena, and Khalil's imprisoned brother, Hassan--begin to tell their sides of her story from various points in the future. Halah "hadn't been in her right mind before she vanished," and as the other characters try to piece together what happened, her earlier obsessions and actions seem less like immaturity. As they reckon with Halah's disappearance, the other three characters' stories reach out into diverse futures where they each come to terms with Halah's influence and their connections to their Egyptian past. Interesting for what it says about youth and romance entangling with mental illness.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2022
From her roof across the Nile, Halah Ibrahim watches flames engulf downtown Cairo in 1952. Struck by the destruction, the sheltered teenager begins to question her father's role in Egypt's revolution and its new government, especially as her own independence wanes. To avoid marrying a much older suitor, she runs away to New York with Khalil Seif, a 23-year-old veteran she unwittingly meets and becomes enamored with during her father's political gatherings. The couple navigates life as new immigrants as well as the wrath of Halah's parents and the imprisonment of Khalil's brother back in Cairo. But when a trip to Egypt goes awry, a sudden disappearance further tests the fragile ties between their families. Against the backdrop of a newly liberated Egypt, this poignant debut follows the characters' personal pursuits of independence across three decades. Author Azim also explores the meaning of home through provocative coming-of-age stories in first and third person, touching on loss and mental health. Spanning generations and seas, Country of Origin is a powerful must-read on family, identity, and the sacrifices that freedom demands.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 28, 2022
Azim’s evocative debut opens with Egypt on the brink of revolution in 1952, as seen through the eyes of an Egyptian girl. Halah Ibrahim’s father, Mansoor, is a general consumed with politics, and while he chases power and influence, Halah is pulled from school and left at home with her mother and their housemaid, Reema. General Ibrahim’s clandestine gatherings with members of a military faction are Halah’s sole exposure to the outside world. When Halah chafes at the prospect of an arranged marriage at 17, she runs away with Khalil Seif, a soldier who has landed a scholarship in America. This irreparably damages her relationship with her family, and Halah later wonders if it prompted her father to arrest and imprison Khalil’s brother, Hassan. In 1955, Halah has a daughter, Amena, and tries to make amends with her father. But during a visit to Egypt a couple years later, Halah goes missing and never returns. Her family is left to discover what became of her, and the novel diverges into Khalil, Hassan, and Amena’s perspectives, allowing Azim to gradually reveal hidden layers of the story, enriching her characters and illuminating the heart of a country and people. The result is insightful and nuanced.