Alicia Erian

Sent to live with her strict Lebanese father in Texas upon the outbreak of the Gulf War, Arab-American teen Jasira endures racial taunts from her new classmates and enters into a dangerously exploitative relationship with a bigoted Army reservist. A first novel. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

A Novel

Towelhead

Un romanzo bello e sorprendente, dove la vita quotidiana è raccontata con una lucidità acuminata e una partecipazione tenera che si lasciano indietro di gran lunga il miglior Raymond Carver, facendoci entrare nel corpo e nella testa di un’adolescente di oggi con un’abilità da scrittrice vera.

Beduina

Funny, disturbing, completely compelling, TOWELHEAD was picked as a New York Times Notable Book of 2005. Jasira, a teenaged Arab-American girl, is sent away by her mother to live with her father, after the mother's boyfriend begins paying her too much attention. But Jasira's father is unable to show her the affection she craves, or to handle her feelings about her rapidly changing body. America is about to go to war in Kuwait, and Jasira becomes ever more isolated at school, and begins to look for love in all the wrong places. Mr Vuoso, a neighbour and army reservist who catches her looking at his copy of Playboy while she is babysitting his son, is quick to take advantage of her vulnerability. Things look very bad for Jasira until a pregnant neighbour, Melina, offers her a lifeline, and in the novel's hilarious, and heartbreaking climax, manages to bring father and daughter, finally, a little closer to one another.

Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. In "Alcatraz," we meet a middle-school spelling champion who spends her afternoons taking baths with the boy next door. In "Almonds and Cherries," a young woman turns an unexpectedly arousing bra-shopping experience into a short film, with ramifications for everyone around her. In "On the Occasion of My Ruination," a college-bound student plots to lose her virginity to a pizza parlor waiter. The Brutal Language of Love challenges traditional notions of right and wrong with what has become Erian's signature -- an achingly stylish humor and a deep understanding of the brutal truth about human nature. These surprising, provocative, and deeply resonant stories marked the emergence of a major talent

Stories

The Brutal Language of Love

Sent to live with her strict Lebanese father in Texas upon the outbreak of the Gulf War, Arab-American teen Jasira endures racial taunts from her new classmates and enters into a dangerously exploitative relationship with a bigoted Army reservist. Reissue. 75,000 first printing. (A Warner Independent film, directed by Alan Ball, releasing August 2008, starring Aaron Eckhart, Toni Collette, & Maria Bello) (General Fiction)

Alicia Erian

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