Floodlines

A sweeping, multi-generational novel that traces the fractured bonds between three sisters

In the summer of 2014, three estranged sisters are drawn back into each other’s orbits through the discovery of their late father’s lost paintings. As Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar lay claim to his legacy—an inheritance laced with exile, betrayal, and an Iraq they no longer recognise—Zainab’s son Nizar, a traumatized war correspondent, returns to the family fold. As summer bleeds into autumn and the truth about the family paintings unfurls, Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar are forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore their family apart.  

Spanning continents and decades, Floodlines grapples with legacy, memory, and family secrets, and charts the emotional and political aftershocks of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Inspired by Haddad’s family history, Floodlines is a contemporary Iraqi epic that explores family, queerness, and the disruptive legacies of (neo)colonialism in haunting, visceral prose. 

Author Biography

Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City in 1983 to a Lebanese-Palestinian father and an Iraqi-German mother, and was educated in Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and has advised on humanitarian and peacebuilding issues throughout West Asia and North Africa. He is the author of the acclaimed debut Guapa, a 2017 Stonewall Honor Book and the winner of the 2017 Polari Prize. He is currently based in Lisbon.