On Fragile Waves
Readers rate it 4.1 (11 on Hardcover)
289 pages · Released Feb 2, 2021 · Erewhon Books
Content report card
On Fragile Waves parent’s guide: what’s inside
Sexual content
LGBTQ+ themes
Substance use
What it offers
A note for parents
This is a lyrical, award-winning literary novel about an Afghan refugee family's dangerous journey to Australia, centered on a girl navigating displacement, loss, and discrimination. While not graphically violent, the book deals with the trauma of war, refugee hardship, family separation, and the psychological toll of displacement and rejection—themes that require emotional maturity to process. The prose is beautiful and the story rewards resilience and empathy, but the weight of the material is better suited to older teens who can grapple with its heavy emotional and social themes.
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From the publisher
NPR Books We Love 2021 | Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2021 | Booklist Best of 2021 | Booklist Editors' Choice: Adult Titles | NYT Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021 | Washington Independent Review of Books 51 Favorite Books of 2021 “On Fragile Waves is a tremendous and almost unbearable work of witness.... NPR Books We Love 2021 | Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2021 | Booklist Best of 2021 | Booklist Editors' Choice: Adult Titles | NYT Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021 | Washington Independent Review of Books 51 Favorite Books of 2021 “On Fragile Waves is a tremendous and almost unbearable work of witness. It is devastating and perfect.” — New York Times Book Review The haunting story of a family of dreamers and tale-tellers looking for home in an unwelcoming world. This exquisite and unusual magic realist debut, told in intensely lyrical prose by an award winning author, traces one girl’s migration from war to peace, loss to loss, home to home. Firuzeh and her brother Nour are children of fire, born in an Afghanistan fractured by war. When their parents, their Atay and Abay, decide to leave, they spin fairy tales of their destination, the mythical land and opportunities of Australia. As the family journeys from Pakistan to Indonesia to Nauru, heading toward a hope of home, they must rely on fragile and temporary shelters, strangers both mercenary and kind, and friends who vanish as quickly as they’re found. When they arrive in Australia, what seemed like a stable shore gives way to treacherous currents. Neighbors, classmates, and the government seek their own ends, indifferent to the family’s fate. For Firuzeh, her fantasy worlds provide some relief, but as her family and home splinter, she must surface from these imaginings and find a new way.
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Science Fiction
- Fantasy
- War
- Brothers and sisters, fiction
- Fiction, family life
- Fiction, magical realism
- Fiction, coming of age
- Fiction, fantasy, general
- Brothers and sisters
- Refugees
- Families
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ISBN 9781645660125 · Erewhon Books