An unlasting home

It’s 2013 and Sara is a philosophy professor at Kuwait University. Her relationship with Kuwait is complicated; it is a country she always thought she would leave, a country she recognizes less and less. Yet for eleven years — since her return from Berkeley following her mother’s unexpected death — a certain inertia has kept her there. When teaching Nietzsche in her Intro to Philosophy course leads to an accusation of blasphemy, which carries with it the threat of execution, Sara realizes she must reconcile her feelings and her place in the world once and for all.

Interspersed with Sara’s narrative are the stories of her grandmothers, Yasmine and Lulwa, and her two mothers, Noura and Maria. Ranging from the 1920s to the near present, An Unlasting Home traces Kuwait’s rise from a pearl-diving backwater to its reign as a thriving cosmopolitan state to the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion. At once intimate and sweeping, personal and political, it is an unforgettable family portrait and a spellbinding epic tale.