The Sisters

A Novel

De: Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Narrado por: Aleksander Varadian

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

One of The New Yorker's 24 Essential Reads of the Year
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction

One of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal
One of the BBC’s 10 Best Books of the Summer | A Times (London) Best Book of the Year

"Narrator Aleksander Varadian keeps his foot on the gas for the length of this epic, shifting with apparent ease between Stockholm place names, Arabic slang, and French intimacies." —Kirkus

“One gawps . . . at its breadth and ambition. [The Sisters is] a transnational tour de force.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

“One of this summer’s most buzzed-about novels.” —Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times

“A classic story about sibling rivalry . . . One of the best novels I've ever read about the complexities of mixed heritage.” —Fredrik Backman, The New Yorker

“[The Sisters] generates every kind of heat . . . If you welcome this novel into your mind, it will warm and transform you.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award–winning author of The Rabbit Hutch

“Astonishing . . . Every character—every sentence—is startlingly, indubitably alive.” —Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and Intimacies

An addictively entertaining 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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Great storyline - easy listen with super narrative. I really enjoyed it.

Really well read - the story is so easy to follow without being shallow. So much to absorb and easy to fall into the characters. Great read.

The reality of it all

Having read Everything I Don't Remember, I was a bit hesitant, even though I know that Jonas is an excellent writer. his previous novel could be confusing as Faulkner can be both beautiful and frustrating at the same time. but The Sisters was fascinating, felt honest right through and painted a picture of a Sweden that came into its own after I left for New York in 1987 and then again and permanently in 1989. it's a great modern family saga.

Writing style

Interesting writing style. It made it difficult to get into and a strong unique book overall.

The intricacies of the characters

The Sisters is a sweeping family saga that spans decades and continents. I’ll admit I found the writing style a little hard to stay focused on, and the shifting timeline sometimes made it tricky to know exactly what year we were in. But what truly kept me turning the pages were the characters — Ina, Evelyn, Anastasia, and Jonas. They felt so vivid and real that I couldn’t let them go, and by the time I reached the end I was so glad I stuck with their story.

Interesting cultural perspective

I very much enjoyed the characters of the three sisters and was interested in particular in the unusual cultural juxtaposition. I found the half of the novel that was the story of the Jonas character a lot less interesting . For me the book was far too long with the last third actually quite difficult to get through.