This debut collection of short stories by Yumna Kassab is remarkable for its minimalism.
Set in the suburbs of Western Sydney, it portrays the lives of Lebanese immigrants, and their families. The stories revolve around their hopes and regrets, their feelings of isolation, and their nostalgia for what they might have lost or left behind. In particular, The House of Youssef is about relationships, and the customs which complicate them: children growing away from their parents, parents anxious about their children’s futures, the intricacies of marriage, the breakable bonds of friendship.
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2020
Longlisted for the Stella Prize 2020
Shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award at the QLD Literary Awards 2020
Shortlisted for the 2020 Readings Prize
Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2020
This could be any small town. It aches under the heat of summer. It flourishes in the cooler months. Everyone knows everyone. Their families, histories and stories are interwoven and well-known by one and all. Or at least, they think they are. But no-one sees anything quite the same way. Perceptions differ, truths are elusive, judgements have outcomes and everything is connected. For better or for worse.
This is a version of small-town Australia that is recognisable, both familiar and new, exploring the characters, threads, and connections that detail everyday life to reveal a much bigger story. A tapestry that makes up this place called home.
Shortlisted for the 2022 Queensland Literary Awards
What happens when we become used to each other, when we become bored, when we anticipate each other’s moods like the seasons cycled in a day? What happens when you are tired of me and I tire of you?
Every couple has a story. How they met, how they fell in love their ups, their downs. What made them want to be in each other’s arms day and night. The struggle of family expectations. The need to please each other, the desire to go their separate ways. It is about the private universe between two people as they try to hold to each other despite the barriers of geography, culture and class.
Every couple has a beginning, a middle, and maybe an end.
The Lovers is an enchanting fable that explores the light and dark of a relationship a love distilled down to its barest form. You might think you know this story. Maybe you do.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Miles Franklin Award
Shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Award
Shortlisted for the 2023Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
A captivating literary journey that delves into the intertwined lives of a town, its people, and a region shaped by revolution and war.
The war broke out and she decided to call her dad. Weeks and weeks they do not speak, and the weeks become months and then they are so many years. She imagines herself starting this story. She imagines how she will tell this story later to someone else. We hadn’t spoken for years but then the war broke out…
As conflict plays out across an unnamed region, its inhabitants deal with the fallout. Families are torn apart and brought together. A divide grows between those on either side of the war, compromises are struck as the toll of violence impacts near and far. We learn about those who are left behind and those who choose to leave in a great scattering. As the stories of those affected play out, they weave together to show the whole of a society in the most extreme of circumstances. Even after the last shot is fired, their world will never recover.
From the acclaimed author of The House of Youssef, Australiana and The Lovers comes a powerful new novel that asks again if it’s possible to ever measure the personal cost of war.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards
Longlisted for the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Good News: The worst has already happened. Bad News: Even worse is on the way.
This is a fictional theory, a rant, a manifesto, an engagement or disengagement with the times, a record; it is bearing witness, a dramatisation of actual events, a horror-scape, either a monologue or dialogue, a testament, travel guide, handbook, textbook, potential encyclopaedia; it is five mini-novels or else five post-novels, an epic, a drop in the ocean, an homage, a reference, one long secret handshake, an agreement, a wink; it is an explosion of form, tangential, discursive, a firming of the foundations, a lament, an absurdist comedy with realism that is as realistic as it gets; it is a spectrum, shades of black from the dark to the next shade up from white, a proliferation, a step back, a righting, a note to oneself, a line in the sand or a gust in the form of a structure-shaking gale; it is a dance (a two-footed, single-person linedance), an experiment, pure science, flicking the finger; it is, of course, backing away, crossing the street and avoiding eye contact; it is fantasy, humour, a romance without any leads, a defiance, a subdued rebellion, an anti-philosophical philosophy; it is pacifism that instigates a fight, a denouncement in the form of a laugh, an exploration, an adventure, a time lapse, a panorama, a conclusion; you may just have to read the theory because these are just alluding-to-the-theory words.
Reviews and other related material can be found here.
So I have been so looking forward to doing something in the lead up to International Translation Day which falls on the 30th of September every year. On Friday the 27th of September, I will be hosting a conversation with Tiffany Tsao and Chris Andrews at the Peter Shergold Building in Parramatta Square. The conversation…
On the 6th of September, I will be launching Diving, Falling, the debut novel by Kylie Mirmohamadi. This is an incredible book and I can’t wait to rave about it publicly. It begins with the death of Ken Black, a famous artist, and the fallout after his death, centred around the perspective of his wife,…
I try to keep all the reviews and interviews for each book in one place. Politica was released on the 3rd of January and it’s now been out in the world for almost five months. I have had a few events to discuss it publicly and to contextualise some of the fragments that appear in…
Some good books I’ve been reading lately: Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad Always Will Be by Mykaela Saunders A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi (translated by Chris Andrews) The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud (translated by John Cullen) Exhalation by Ted Chiang Hospital by Sanya Rushdi (translated by Arunava Sinha) Enter Ghost is a…
My latest published piece is the very fragmentary Guernica in Meanjin. For some time now I have been thinking that the last 6 months with Gaza and Palestine require a new language. I keep searching for symbols that will help give me a framework to make sense of what I have witnessed. I wrote Guernica…
I have a few upcoming events. Next Thursday the 4th of April, I’ll be in conversation with Michelle Law where we will be discussing the Stella Prize shortlist which will be announced on the day. My first event ever at PHIVE in Parramatta will take place as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival on the…
Two pieces of news. My second book, Australiana, has had its first translation ever, into Greek. This is a very exciting piece of news and I hope there are more translations in the future. I really would love to see all my books in Arabic and Spanish. The second piece of news is that I…
I have been raving about Only Sound Remains since I read it back in August last year. It was the book I recommended in an interview with Books + Publishing. There was something oppressive about the confession of the father to his son. The book also moved seamlessly across time periods. There is such incredible…
I recently finished In My Past Life I Was Cleopatra by Amal Awad. I wish this book had existed years ago. I felt like it was written for me. It is the first thing I’ve read by Awad but it won’t be the last. I found a copy of Things You May Find Hidden in…
Her books have been listed for the Miles Franklin Award, Stella Prize, QLD Literary Awards, Victorian Premier’s Awards, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award.
A complete list of her writings can be found under Other Writings.
Yumna Kassab 