This is an excerpt from Paradiso 17, a new novel by Hannah Lillith Assadi, which maps the journey of a Palestinian boy, Sufien, through exile from his homeland to the Middle East, Europe, and then America. This particular moment is from his time in Kuwait and his first experience with young love. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
What Sufien always remembered about Kuwait was the voice of the Gulf, that rolling tongue, languorous and all-knowing, like the voice of the divine.
