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A Novel
by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
An addictively entertaining, internationally bestselling family saga by a National Book Award finalist.
Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger.
Ina meets her future husband when she's dragged to a New Year's rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down―and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are.
Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Sisters is a big, vivid family saga of the highest order―an addictively entertaining tour de force.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (12/25/2025)
I have just started The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri and blew through170 pages in one cold, dreary day as I recovered from the holiday craziness. I am really enjoying it and hopefully will feel the same...
-Laurie_L
Publishers Weekly Top 10/Top 150
...le Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/21138/the-sisters The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas Y...
-kim.kovacs
"Wondrous...Blending humor and pathos, Khemiri perfectly encapsulates the push and pull of living in two different and sometimes dueling cultures. It's a staggering achievement." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The longer pieces have their longueurs...but each part offers a tantalizing bit of a secret that the reader must pursue to the end in order to understand just how Jonas' story intertwines with the Mikkolas', even as their lives have over decades. Long in the telling, but a lively portrait of familial, cultural, and amorous entanglements." —Kirkus Reviews
"Told in vivid prose that explores the immigrant experience, family bonds, and a supposed curse passed from mother to daughter, Khemiri's bold, intricate family saga will resonate with Rachel Khong and Claire Lombardo fans." —Library journal
This information about The Sisters was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of novels (including Everything I Don't Remember and Montecore), plays (such as I Call My Brothers), and a collection of plays, essays, and short stories (Invasion!). Among his many honors are the August Prize, the highest literary award for Swedish literature; the Enquist Literary Prize; the Borås Tidning Award for Best Literary Debut Novel; and an Obie Award. His novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and his plays have been performed by more than one hundred companies around the world. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden.
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