A sweeping, multi-generational novel that traces the fractured bonds between three Iraqi-British sisters

In the autumn of 2014, as the Islamic State declares the establishment of a Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, three estranged Iraqi-British sisters are drawn back into each other’s orbits through the discovery of their late father’s lost paintings.

As Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar each lay claim to his legacy—an inheritance laced with exile, betrayal, and a homeland they no longer recognize—Zainab’s son Nizar, a traumatized war correspondent, returns to the family fold.

Spanning continents and decades, Floodlines charts the emotional and political aftershocks of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Inspired by Haddad’s family history and the artistic legacy of his great uncle Jewad Selim—a key protagonist of Iraqi Modernism—Floodlines is a contemporary Iraqi epic, and explores exile, queerness, and the disruptive legacies of (neo)colonialism in haunting, visceral prose.

Saleem Haddad
Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City in 1983 to a Lebanese-Palestinian father and an Iraqi-German mother, and was educated in Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and has advised on humanitarian and peacebuilding issues throughout West Asia and North Africa. He is the author of the acclaimed debut Guapa, a 2017 Stonewall Honor Book and the winner of the 2017 Polari Prize. He is currently based in Lisbon.