The Pact We Made

De: Layla AlAmmar

Narrado por: Nadia Albina

Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book • Featured on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking • An ELLE Magazine cultural pick • Reviewed in the Observer

What if you had to choose between your family and your freedom?

‘How could I explain to her that nothing in my life felt real? That in a country like Kuwait, where everyone knew everything about each other, the most monumental thing to ever happen to me was buried and covered over? For the sake of my reputation, my future, my sisters and cousins; the family honor sat on my little shoulders, so no-one could ever know.’

Dahlia has two lives. In one, she is a young woman with a good job, great friends and a busy social life. In the other, she is an unmarried daughter living at home, struggling with a burgeoning anxiety disorder and a deeply buried secret: a violent betrayal too shameful to speak of.

With her 30th birthday fast approaching, pressure from her mother to accept a marriage proposal begins to strain the family. As her two lives start to collide and fracture, all Dahlia can think of is escape: something that seems impossible when she can’t even leave the country without her father’s consent.

But what if Dahlia does have a choice? What if all she needs is the courage to make it?

Set in contemporary Kuwait, The Pact We Made is a deeply affecting and timely debut about family, secrets and one woman’s search for a different life.

©2019 Layla AlAmmar (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

Reseñas de la Crítica

"A Kuwaiti #MeToo novel of muffled suffering and a bid for freedom - absorbing, brave and compelling." (Leila Aboulela)

"Truthful and courageous, radical and lyrical. I loved it." (Hanan Al-Shaykh)