The novel follows Zuhour, a young Omani woman studying in Britain, suspended between the life she is trying to build and the people, stories, duties and losses that continue to pull at her from home.

At the centre is Bint Aamir, the woman Zuhour thought of as her grandmother, whose death becomes less a single grief than a doorway into memory: family history, female endurance, social constraint, inheritance, longing, and those somewhat bitter economies that come with love. Alharthi writes beautifully about migration without flattening it into either escape or exile. Britain is not freedom exactly, Oman is not simply home, and memory is not sentimental. It is more like sand: it gets into everything.

A very good one for readers of translated literary fiction, diasporic novels, intergenerational women’s stories, and quiet books with real structural intelligence beneath them. Also good for people who enjoy a slim novel that looks polite on the shelf but you know there's a weapon of thought inside.

Scribner paperback, first published in Australia in 2022. Translated by Marilyn Booth. Good used condition. Light handling and cover wear, but clean and solid overall. Nice reading copy.