A riveting multigenerational read.. Author Zahara Barri starts us with Yasminah, our main protagonist. Struggling with her sexuality, working on her thesis for the betterment of women and homosexuality. Having to flee to London, finding herself through disappointment, heartache, and hope.
But for a mother’s love, Fatiha, mother to Yasminah, Aziz, and Ussman..
A chance meeting in college between Fatiha and Doria Shafik, So forms a sisterhood for the ages, and their fight for women’s rights and empowerment. In a time where women were oppressed and men govern and rule, these two broke boundaries, stood up to change the norm, and dared to lose their families in protest. This helped pave the way for Fathia’s daughter and granddaughter, Nadia- courage, strength, understanding and love.
Written with passion, feeling every challenge, every set back, every triumph. It hits on several “hot” topics that have you engaged from beginning to end. I appreciate every detail and aspect of each character; taking us to Saudi, England, and Egypt. This is a slow read; full of emotion and fervor. I enjoyed this greatly and the ending was PERFECT!

#DaughtersOfTheNile #NetGalley
I love reading about characters who struggle with their identity, That makes for complex and flawed human beings that are very interesting to be around, albeit on the written page. Zahra Barri, an Egyptian-Irish comedian uses her background as a canvas for a funny, daring exploration of womanhood in a restrictive cultural context. The story starts with Fatiha bin Khalid, who meets Egyptian feminist icon Doria Shafik in Paris, then has a really hard time making heads or tails of her new role as a mother, after years of fiercely fighting for the rights of Muslim women.
Years later, Fatiha's daughter, Yasminah, faces public humiliation after her forbidden relationship is discovered in 1960s Cairo. The odds are against her.
In 2011, Nadia, born in Britain, is dealing with a nasty STD and moves in with her traditionalist aunt Yasminah, seeking her purpose in the world.
Together, these women push back against the limits of their cultures, forging paths for themselves at all costs, with resilience, humour and loyalty to one another as their sharpest weapons. Fans of feminist, queer, and Muslim-world fiction will have a blast with this novel. Five of five!

I went into this book with high hopes, thanks to the premise of the story. However, it was a letdown. When you incorporate the perspective of multiple characters, you need to hold equal wait to each one. Barri fails to do this quickly, even though she initially set the book up for it. Also, I had an issue with the modern-day protagonist as she her whole personality centered the STD she carelessly spread to each of her sexual partners (she fails to disclose her disease and doesn't use protection). I couldn't determine what the point of the story was supposed to be 50 pages in, so I had to give up on it.

I really wanted to love Daughters of the Nile! The premise had me hooked right from the start and you could tell the author had a lot of passion and heart for this topic. I normally love a book that switches perspectives but this one had too many narrators and timelines that it became a struggle to keep everything straight as the plot progressed. Some of the chapters also felt way too short to justify a perspective jump and frequently did little to advance the story. I did enjoy learning more about feminism from a perspective and lived experience so vastly different than my own. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys feminist literature and queer stories.

Daughters of the Nile is a book that promised so much, a tale surrounded by family, tradition, religion, sexuality, and history. To say that the book didn’t deliver would be unfair, but I did finish it wishing that it has been written with more depth and complexity.

Saying this, I love to read a book that is all about the lives of women, women’s rights and feminism. It’s not just exciting and enjoyable to read but essential. The Bin-Khalid women were relatable and raw and honest – I felt them through the pages.

Unfortunately, where the book fell flat for me was right at the middle section, where it attempted to cover so much ground on topics, it became overwhelming and flat. By no means a bad novel, and one I would generally recommend, it’s very readable and enjoyable, but it just missed the mark.

In this complex triple perspective novel, readers follow three women from the same family -- Fatiha, in 1940 Paris, her daughter Yasminah in Cairo in 1966, and Fatiha’s granddaughter Nadia in 2011 Bristol -- as they grow up and come to terms with the realities of education, queerness, social revolution, and female friendships in challenging times. With radically different lives, each woman feels isolated and limited by the rules of their family and their society. Dealing with the hopes and realities of womanhood and queerness in Islamic culture in the late twentieth century, this book is a fascinating perspective into the changing social and cultural norms for women like Fatiha, Yasminah, and Nadia. As they change their lives through their experiences of the world, readers also see how sexuality and women’s rights interact within this intense and complex world through the individual lens and case studies of the Bin-Khalid women. The characters are absolutely the star of this novel, and Barri has made them so completely different from each other that readers can clearly identify the chapter transitions, yet the similarities between the three women are only apparent to the readers, not the characters themselves. A deep and complex novel, this book is absolutely compelling and oddly satirical, and readers are sure to think hard about this book.

Daughters of the Nile by Zahra Barri

I find the best books are those which not only entertain,but inform and educate; those which leave one feeling enhanced as a person. This is one of those books.

Telling the story of 3 generations of Muslim women, the reader is taken on a journey which includes Cairo, Tehran and London and spanning over 50 years. We share the challenges faced by each of these women through the changing attitudes of the societies in which they live. The world changes but some aspects of human experience such as love, life and loss stay the same. Culture and religion remain steadfast, but whilst fully maintaining respectfulness, could their interpretation vary over time?

It is clear from reading, that a great deal of research, passion and care has gone into this book. It is all there on the pages. I was a little taken aback by the vivid descriptions of some of the women’s medical complaints but this added to the realty of the situations.

In terms of greater understanding of Muslim culture for a wider audience, together with providing an outlet for female voices, this could be a watershed book.

I love books looking at a few different generations of women. This one did this so well. How their lives were affected as Egypt changed from the 50s on ward.

As soon as I read the description of this book, I was so excited. I’m Coptic-Egyptian, but really enjoyed learning more about Islamic-Egyptian culture. This is a thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, and entirely unique read.

Barri has created an interesting and engaging reflection of the political landscape of Egypt over the last ~70 years. I simultaneously enjoyed this story and learned an incredible amount about Egyptian and Islamic history.

The characters in this book were complex and beautifully written, although I could have benefited from a little family tree diagram for my tired brain. The only issue I had with this book was that there was a section around the middle that I struggled to get through, as it included a lot of political discussion and information that when grouped together became quite overwhelming.

Overall, this book managed to span large concepts and ideologies including Islam, queer identity, race, and gender in a poignant and beautiful manner. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys queer stories, themes of feminism, or historical fiction. Make sure to check TWs before reading. 4/5

I only finished this book because I received a free advance reader copy from NetGalley. Well, I also WANTED it to get better. It was confusing from the beginning and while I did like the plot points I could follow, this tale of a family of Egyptian feminists had too many narrators in too many points of time. A given thread might only last a page or two before switching, and I couldn’t keep track. It’s a shame because I haven’t read much about Arab feminism and I really wanted to learn more. I would not recommend this one, though.

🇪🇬 REVIEW 🇪🇬

Daughters of the Nile by Zahra Barri
Publishing Date: 6th June (out now!)

⭐️⭐️.5/5

📝 - Paris, 1940. The course of Fatiha Bin-Khalid’s life is changed forever when she befriends the Muslim feminist Doria Shafik.
Cairo, 1966. After being publicly shamed when her relationship with a bisexual boyfriend is revealed, Fatiha’s daughter Yasminah is faced with an impossible decision.
Bristol, 2011. British-born Nadia is battling with an identity crisis and a severe case of herpes. Feeling unfulfilled (and after a particularly disastrous one-night stand), she moves in with her old-fashioned Aunt Yasminah and realises that she must discover her purpose in the modern world before it’s too late.

💭 - I had such high hopes for this as an inter generational commentary on intersectional feminism in a culture I’m not overly familiar with is right up my street. And the premise of this was good. I enjoyed the different aspects of feminism dealt with by each generation, and how, despite the positive attitudes of each woman, no one’s approach was perfect. However, I felt the writing let the book down a bit. I didn’t feel overly connected to the characters, and there were some contradictions in terms of their behaviour (not just attributable to flawed characters). So unfortunately, this is not one I can highly recommend…

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I was super excited to read this book and I have to say I have really mixed feelings about it. You can tell there is so much heart in this book, such love and admiration. I love reading multiple povs, but unfortunately the going back and forth at times was just very confusing. Some chapters I felt were unnecessary and didn’t bring the story forward at all.

The book follows three characters from the same family. We have Fatiha who is a feminist activist and advocate for female rights in Egypt, in Paris 1940 she meets her best friend Doria Shafik (real person). We then in 1966 get to follow her daughter Yasminah as she navigates her life in Cairo. And then Yasminah's niece Nadia in Bristol 2011.

Now we jump through many years of the characters' lives and not in a chronological order. The best parts are about Fatihas life in Cairo when she talks about her fight for women's rights and also being a mother and wife, how she feels one betrays the other sometimes.
I didn’t really like Nadias parts, but that's because they are very descriptive of her life with Herpes, and I’m a germaphobe and really scared of all illnesses, but I still think it's good they are include to remove the stigma surrounding it. .

Now this is Barri’s debut novel which I personally think is good, but maybe not the ideal book for me? The parts about living in diaspora and the love one has for your home country hit especially hard. But somehow it didn’t do it for me, as I kept pendling from I love this book to why am I reading this?
I’m also looking forward to see what more books will come from Zahra Barri!

In its efforts to paint Islam in different colors it just gave off the totally wrong thing. For me a girl living in Europe a white mans country, I never feel that we need more bad press as muslims. More misconceptions and wrongs. It takes a huge understanding and knowledge of both Islam and the conflicts and happenings in Egypt and the countries surrounding it, to understand this book. It’s truly a book you need to pause to look up certain historical happenings. And for that I am very grateful, I’ve learned a lot of history. Also wanna say that if a reader is unable to understand the sarcasm in the book, many wrong opinions will be formed.

Thank you Unbound and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

DNF at 38%

not an irredeemable novel, has a lot of potential to be interesting and unique, but the three perspectives somewhat failed to capture three different discernible storylines, and were too often carouselled, causing them to become too brief and unelaborated upon to be interesting enough to ultimately present a pressure to continue. I can see this novel being quite good for someone, but at this time I have things I would rather be prioritizing over this when I am not enjoying it as much as I should.

Like Bridget Jones meets The Museum of Innocence by way of The Colour Purple, and taking no prisoners along the way.

Narrated by three generations of women in an Egyptian/British-Egyptian family, each of the women must wear masks, no matter where they are, who they’re with, and anyway, do we really know each other as well as we think we do? And behind the masks are souls of steel that fight for what they believe in, even when those around them are trying to erode their spirits, their moral compasses, their desires.

Like a sucker punch to my awareness, this novel thrust me into a world so unfamiliar that it was like staring into a parallel universe. From Paris in the Forties and Cairo in the Sixties to Bristol and London in the Teenies, this novel has everything: death and despair, dad jokes and romance, politics and dad jokes, sensuous descriptions of food and laugh-out-loud gross-out comedy.

And I loved it. Not because it was challenging but because it was a whole new spectrum of sensations and references and language that I had never experienced before. I said it was like BJ meets tMoI but really it’s a whole thing of itself, the voices of the three generations clearly delineated and defined, their lives full of moment and the consequences of history, but above all joyous and fun and entertaining.

A resounding five stars.

Daughters of the Nile was a beautiful portrait of family, tradition, religion, sexuality, and women's struggles throughout multiple generations. I loved reading about the rich, but at the same time oppressive, culture of Egypt and other parts of the Middle East throughout the 1950s-1990s. I was so engrossed in the lives of all the Bin-Khalid women, who all fought/advocated for women's rights and the feminist movement in some capacity. Every character in this story was so complex and flawed which made them much more relatable and believable. At times, I felt like certain parts could have been more succinct, but overall, a wonderful read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Thank you to Unbound Firsts Publishing and Zahra Barri (via NetGalley) for this Advanced Reading Copy of Daughters of the Nile in exchange for an honest review.

Spanning 70 years across Paris, Tehran, Cairo and London, this story follows three generations of women from the Bin-Khalid family, who all play a role in contributing to gender and identity politics of their time, whilst navigating the Islamic faith in which they were raised.

This story is beautifully woven, and often confronting in detail. The characters are complex and flawed, wrestling with their identities whilst bravely advocating for understanding and change.

What I loved the most about this story was the contrast in the identity expressions of Fatiha, Yasminah and Nadia, and how these lead to misunderstandings between each of the women, when in fact, they are all broadly advocating for the same thing; equal rights for women and marginalized people.

Navigation and interpretation of faith was also a central theme in this book, and I enjoyed how this was expressed by each of the women, particularly Yasminah, who whilst arguably lives the most alternative lifestyle of the three women, also displays the deepest connection and commitment to her faith.

Overall Zahra Barri has created an enjoyable and insightful novel, and I would recommend this to readers who are interested in feminist and identity politics and the intersection of these themes with faith. I look forward to reading more from Zahra Barri in the future.

This captivating multigenerational saga follows the lives of Yasminah, Nadia, and Fatiha from the 1940s to 2013. Set against the backdrop of the Middle East, Africa, London, and Paris, the narrative weaves a tapestry of struggles, triumphs, romances, and heartaches.

What truly stands out is the intricate character development, as each woman's journey is intricately connected despite the vast geographical and temporal distances. The author's meticulous attention to historical accuracy adds depth and richness to the storytelling, making the book informative and engaging.

While Yasminah, Nadia, and Fatiha belong to different eras, their quests for self-empowerment resonate powerfully throughout the narrative, offering a poignant and universal message. A must-read for those seeking an immersive and thought-provoking exploration of womanhood across generations. It is highly recommended for its compelling storytelling and resonant themes.

NetGalley Review 📚

Daughters of the Nile - Zahra Barri
Published by @unbounders

This will be my first ARC review and it feels only right to say that this book jumped out at me straight away, the description and the cover.

Daughters of the Nile is a multi-generational story about three women from the same family. At its heart it is a feminist book about liberation and queerness and the love, struggles and misunderstandings between these women.

I felt that, for each of these woman, you really felt for their struggles with each other but also with themselves and their position and place within the society they live in. Whether that be Egypt or England (or other). The oppression and hardships faced by these women shaped who they became and also how they reacted to circumstances and people around them.

I really felt all the emotions reading this book, it is at times heart wrenching but also very funny. You root for the characters to communicate and overcome their obstacles and to find understanding with each other and you laugh plenty of times on the journey with them.

I learned so much from this book about Egypt and the feminist movements mentioned in the book. It makes you want to go wild on google and learn as much as possible.

Thanks so much. To @netgalley and @unbounders for allowing me the chance to read this book. I know I will be recommending this for sure and will be grabbing a hard copy of the book to put on my shelves at home.

Read if you like:

•queer stories
•feminism
•bisexual representation
•Islamic themes

#zahrabarri #netgalleyreview #arcreviewer #unbounders #booklover #queerbooks #feministbooks #bookstagrammer #daugtersofthenile

If you ever want a book where stories and lives of Arab women aren't told through the limited lens of struggle, independence, and religious revolution, then this is it. Zahra Barri weaves a multi-generational story of women who have faced struggles, but doesn't define their lives by the virtue of their survival. Rather these characters live a bold and unapologetic life, without feeling the need to push "boundaries".

The authors deeply intimate style of writing takes you on an incredible journey with the three generations of women that feature in this book.
The attention to historical detail is excellent, spanning from 1940's to 2010's.
Set across multiple landscapes, including the Middle East, Paris and London.
As well as being completely engrossed in the storyline, I amassed new knowledge on many aspects of countries and cultures different to my own.
To be Muslim and queer....the complexity of being true to yourself, finding your own place in society....I did not want this book to end!