Between Two Moons

Praise

“Heartfelt. Moving. Powerful. Between Two Moons is a gorgeously written and profoundly intimate debut. Aisha Abdel Gawad follows an Egyptian family in New York as they struggle to navigate the immigrant experience, powerfully depicting the struggle to remain themselves and the pressure to assimilate, the emotional trauma, uncertainty, displacement, and culture shock. An urgent and unflinching story that deeply challenges and changes you. We need voices like those of Aisha Abdel Gawad.”
—Etaf Rum, author of New York Times bestseller A Woman Is No Man

“Between Two Moons is a generous, beautiful portrait of both the joys and fears of Muslim life, one that doesn’t treat lived experience only as tragedy. It is a moving look at family, survival, and celebration, one that will echo for decades.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America

“Between Two Moons is a fearless and unflinchingly honest debut. With dangerous accuracy, Aisha Abdel Gawad depicts a particular kind of immigrant existence, that of an Egyptian family in New York struggling with myriad fault lines, both generational and experiential. The small details throughout this story—from the mechanics of prayer-time ablution to the subtleties of Egyptian-accented English—are spot-on. More than anything, Between Two Moons is a story about the place so many Arabs in this part of the world have been forced to inhabit in the post-911 age: that malicious, disorienting chasm between the hope of being seen and the fear of being watched.”
—Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise and American War

“The Muslim community in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge is a world we hardly know, filled with Arab American women who have long been neglected in the white pages of American Letters. In Aisha Gawad’s stylistically superb debut these women are seen, heard, and made known. Aisha’s elegant and fearless prose introduces us to Amira and Lina, post 9/11 twin sisters who are scarred witnesses of the distrust, fear, and racism Arab Americans face every day. Yet, they soar. Amira, torn between leaving Brooklyn while staying loyal to her Egyptian heritage, to ‘not to be like them—those people, out there in the world, who didn’t know us and despised us.’ And rebellious Lina, who like Icarus, just might have soared too high towards the violence of men. See Something, Say Something? In this doubtless classic, Aisha Gawad has seen many things, and her bold and dazzling prose illuminates everything.” 
—Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams

“Gawad’s excellent debut novel illuminates one family’s story through the holy month of fasting against the backdrop of NYPD surveillance of a Muslim neighborhood and larger fears of detainment and deportation. . . . Engaging. . . A complex portrayal of [a] whole community. . . A vibrant achievement.”
—Kirkus