The River Knows My Name

From award-winning writer Mortada Gzar, author of the acclaimed memoir I’m in Seattle, Where Are You?, comes an enthralling and lyrical novel about a girl’s liberating self-discovery in Iraq.

Fifteen-year-old Charlotte is restlessly coming of age in early twentieth-century Basra, Iraq. The daughter of a Seattle doctor and missionary, Charlotte craves an adventure of her own making. Just the thought of the steppes, hills, valleys, and the winding river stirs Charlotte’s imagination and sends her compass of flight dancing.

So, preferring the wondrous unknown to solicitude, Charlotte packs up copies of her father’s Gospels and a statue of the Baby Jesus and runs away. Then, in a desperate search to find his daughter, Charlotte’s own father goes missing. With the help of two women—the mission’s Sister Baghdadli and Shathra, a guide to the lost—Charlotte embarks on a quest steeped in local lore, and as mysterious and marvelous as the river itself. In turn, Charlotte may find what’s she’s been looking for all along: the ability to stake a claim on her own identity.

In this rich and immersive novel, Mortada Gzar explores the power of belief, the drive for escape, and the exhilaration of self-discovery.

Mortada Gzar is an Iraqi American writer, filmmaker, visual artist, and political cartoonist. He is the author of the memoir I’m in Seattle, Where Are You?, which was long-listed for the PEN Translation Prize; four novels; a children’s book; and a short-story collection. He has also illustrated two books for children and has had his work published in Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, and Iraq + 100: The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq, as well as numerous Arabic newspapers. Gzar is the creator of the Seattle Arab Film Festival, and his film Language was awarded a grant by the Doha Film Institute. He was born in Kuwait in 1982, grew up in Basra, Iraq, and now lives in Seattle, Washington. For more information, visit www.mortadagzar.co.