The Philadelphia Inquirer

Maureen Corrigan | The Philadelphia Inquirer

“In these lean times for the book industry, a second chance for a work of literary fiction is beyond fantastical—akin to seeing the Mona Lisa twitch. To resort to a quaint phrase from publishing days of yore, someone at Bloomsbury obviously believed in this book, and, politics aside for a moment, it’s easy to see why. Abulhawa is a passionate writer whose limber, poetic style transports a reader deep inside the war-torn world she chronicles…. Melodramatic? Certainly. Polemical? Absolutely. But, Mornings in Jenin is also a terrifically affecting novel, thanks to Abulhawa’s elegance as a writer. It’s a novel to savor.”