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.
When she finally left, like properly totally completely left,
it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
The signs were there.
Amina’s marriage to Amin was supposed to be a new beginning. Instead it became an inescapable end. Even after the divorce, the shadow of their relationship clings to her, defining her life long after they part.
Set within the intricate world of an Arab community, the story of these once-lovers explores the devastating impact of a failed marriage from its heady beginning to its bitter end. From the outset, it’s clear this is a story of departure, yet Amina’s physical leaving is only the very first step.
Like Lot’s wife, forbidden to look back at her razed city, Amina is meant to move forward, but how can she when the past is burned into her soul?
Reviews and other related material can be found here.
Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory is a unique meditation on place and memory by Yumna Kassab, the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature. Kassab is a highly regarded author of six works of fiction, and has been shortlisted for several major literary awards.
In thinking about the dictionary, I ask what is the dictionary here. It is me and my memories. The dictionary is Parramatta itself as the place that is the backdrop to my memories.
As the inaugural laureate, Yumna Kassab set herself the task of collecting her observations and thoughts on living in Parramatta, now one of the country’s most important economic, political and cultural centres. Employing the dictionary form, the work is at once, as she says, ‘memoir and reflection and vision and gathering and story and documentary’. The entries, from A to Z, cover a wide range of topics, from the uses of language and Kassab’s favourite authors and books, to the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Western Sydney Wanderers; from reflections on beauty, silence, colonisation and friendship to an appreciation of clouds and sunlight, parks and squares, and the city’s cafés, the places where she writes. The entries also offer points of departure, through memory and association, to other places – to Lebanon, Uruguay and especially to Palestine, whose fate casts a deep shadow over her daily experiences. It is a personal dictionary in other words, driven by feeling and admiration and a sense of responsibility, one which, in an unassuming manner, presents an intimate portrait of its compiler. As Kassab writes, ‘It was my idea that a dictionary could tell the story of a person (me) in connection with a place (Parramatta) with enough flexibility to take in detours, digressions, musings, and general quirkiness.’
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…
I have been thinking about process a lot and structure lately. In fragmented times, is it possible to write a cohesive, linear narrative? For months now, I write and write, and I try to find a thread. The thread largely eludes me but this is to be expected. When I write fiction, I often throw…
I have been slowly reading the essays in Our Women on the Ground. It is an anthology of Arab women reporting from the Arab World. It is edited by Zahra Hankir. The essays are insightful and thoughtful. They do what I was trying to do with Politica which is to look at how events affect…
Politica was released on the 3rd of January, 2024. It is my fourth book. It is set in an unnamed region and examines the impact of politics on people’s lives. There are no dates and times, the typical details found in common presentation of politics. Instead, my attention is on individuals in a community and…
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 