Two prominent families, an illicit love affair, and a chorus of voices with multiple perspectives add up to a gripping saga set in modern Tunisia

One fateful night in December 1935, the destinies of two prominent families are changed forever. Zubaida, the young wife of Mohsen Ennaifer, is suspected of a clandestine love affair with Tahar, a radical intellectual from humble origins. This scandalous tryst has many facets, many truths, that are recounted in the voices of the eleven different narrators who, in a feat of storytelling virtuosity, animate this spectacular novel. A complex fresco of secrets, memories, accusations, regrets, and passions set against the backdrop of a country in turmoil, in search of its modern identity.

A compelling, muti-generational story of women’s lives in one of the Arab World’s most intriguing countries, a drama of forbidden love, and a contemporary narrative in which the truth remains forever slightly out of reach, A Calamity of Noble Houses is Amira Ghenim’s English language debut.

Amira Ghenim
Amira Ghenim is a Tunisian writer and academic. Her novel The Yellow Dossier won the 2020 Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamad Prize. A Calamity of Noble Houses was published in 2020.