Spring
A Novel
by Leila Rafei
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Pub Date Aug 25 2020 | Archive Date Sep 18 2020
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Description
Three stories. One revolution. Eighteen days in Egypt.
Sami is no revolutionary. When the Arab Spring breaks out in 2011, he’s busy finishing school in Cairo and hiding his relationship with an American woman from his conservative mother, Suad. It’s a task that’s becoming impossible as events take a catastrophic turn.
But Suad won’t be fooled—her son has been distant and she knows it’s not about politics. Far away in the Nile Delta, she spends her days tending obsessively to her lemon grove, which is quickly becoming her last vestige of control. The only child who remains by her side is her daughter, but as she, too, gets involved with the protests, Suad realizes it won’t last for long.
There’s one person who knows exactly what’s going on in the family, and she wishes she didn’t. The maid, Jamila, already has too much to worry about as a refugee who’s lobbying for resettlement, expecting a baby, and looking for her missing husband. All she wants is stability, and that her dreams won’t be thwarted by the unrest sweeping a city she doesn’t belong to—a city that doesn’t even want her there.
As the country revolts against the regime it has always known, Jamila, Sami, and Suad find themselves caught in the whirlwind as they examine their own life choices and, in some cases, deal with the inevitable heartbreak that follows when revolution is not always what it seems.
A Note From the Publisher
Leila Rafei grew up in the Washington, DC area and lives in New York. Spring is her first novel.
Advance Praise
“Leila Rafei is a wondrous storyteller and a master of world-building. Her novel Spring tells the captivating tale of a family caught in the midst of a revolution that will profoundly change their relationship both to their country and to each other. I was immediately drawn to the novel much in the same way each character is enchanted by the Nile River, which winds through their lives and offers a hopeful glance into their losses, heartaches, and dreams. From the traveling American who demonstrates on Cairo’s streets to the doting mother whose lemon grove thrives even as she is pained to witness her government fall, Rafei’s gorgeous book is at once transporting and recognizable, both shocking and meditative, and replete with insight into how our dreams for our own lives are often mirrored in our dreams for the places we love.”
-Stephanie Jimenez, author of They Could Have Named Her Anything
“Leila Rafei’s Spring is the all too timely tale of a world come rapidly and irreversibly undone. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the Arab Spring, Rafei’s elegant and unsparing debut novel of family and revolution is as essential as it is breathtaking.”
-Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora
“Closely observed, Spring follows the overlapping lives of people living in Cairo in very different ways during the January 25 Revolution. It captures the uncertainty of that singular period in which the world seemed to change completely while life simultaneously went on in much the same mundane ways. The drama and melodrama of everyday life in Cairo in the midst of the disruption is captured in the lives of Jamila, Ali, Rose, and Suad, who see and negotiate the meaning of the social upheaval in radically different ways. Above all, Spring captures the way in which everyone living in Cairo, regardless of their nationality, suddenly found themselves in a new world (that nonetheless looked a lot like the old one).”
-Amy Motlagh, author of Burying the Beloved
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781982672577 |
| PRICE | $26.99 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Elle R, Reviewer
What happens when your country moves into open revolt? When your fellow citizens decide enough is enough? Where do ‘regular people’ fall during this split between protesters and the enforcers?
If these questions resonate with you, you may have been around during the Arab Spring in 2011. Or you might be living in the US in 2020. Or Hong Kong in 2019. Or Latin & South America since 2015. And on, and on, and on...
There really hasn’t been a period in time where people weren’t fighting for their rights against oppressors, whatever form they may take. In Egypt during the first few months of 2011, people were inspired by the initial protests in Tunisia at the end of 2010, which ended up spreading widely through the Middle East. The protestors moved against authoritarianism and corruption, against poverty and unemployment. They were met with violence and attempts at further suppression. Many regimes, including Egypt‘s, turned off their phones and internet access. There were curfews and people were jailed without justification.
But just outside these uprisings are the countless people just living their lives. They may not be actively participating, but that does not exclude them from the effects of all the upheaval. Their proximity makes them involved, whether they want to be or not. And the characters in Spring, by and large, definitely do not.
Sami and his American girlfriend, Rose, are trying to figure out how to make their relationship work when they seem to have so little in common. Rose’s maid, Jamila, is a pregnant Sudanese refugee that’s struggling to find her place. And Sami’s mother, Suad, can’t help but worry about how both he and his sister, Ayah, are going to thrive in this world that seems so different from the one she grew up in. They each try to wage their own personal battles but are unable to ignore the changes taking place around them. These types of conflicts have a way of dragging everyone into the fray.
This isn’t a book about the Arab Spring as much as it is one about how characters coped while living through it. In that way, it might be even more relevant to the average person reading. For those of us who find it easier to ‘not take a side’—it might be more difficult for you down the road. You can’t play bystander for long before it’s all on your doorstep.
This is Leila Rafei’s debut novel. I know I’ve talked a lot about the implications of the real-life events that take place in it, but know that this is also a very good book! She writes beautifully and evocatively, in a way that would make me want to visit the country under different circumstances. I hope that she continues to write and I’m very interested in what else she has to say.
I don’t think I’ve ever been the first review for a book on Goodreads, but I’m guessing with the continued unrest in the United States, there may be an increased interest in books set during modern revolutionary periods. Another one I’ve got on my TBR, also from Blackstone, is A Door Between Us by Ehsaneh Sadr, which takes place amidst the Iranian Green Wave protests in 2009. With all of the new reading the book community is doing to better educate themselves on racial justice and inequality, I just hope we’ll be able to translate this information into some systemic change in this country. If not I’m afraid we’ll end up repeating the very same mistakes that led us to this point in the first place.
Jennifer H, Reviewer
What to do when your country is at a serious state of unrest? Honestly, I don't think there's a right answer to this. But Spring gives us an idea of a country that's been in that state for a long time, and what happens when it continues, unexpected or not. Rafei gives amazing characterizations, rich dialogue, and heartbreaking feelings. Even though most of the book is told in a heightened manner, it's still so wonderfully told.
Spring publishes 8.25.2020.
4/5 Stars
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