Wild Mulberries

By Iman Humaydan Younes

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Sarah is on the brink of adulthood in her village in the mountains of Lebanon in the 1930's, a world itself hesitating on the verge of change. Her father the shaykh is uninterested in anything but the silkworms he's always raised, no matter that each year they're worth less. Her conservative aunt worries only about the family's reputation, fearing that Sarah will take after her mother, who ran away twelve years ago and has been unheard of since. Sarah's brother dreams of going abroad, but each year finds himself still trapped in the family business. Around her the village--Druze and Christian, Lebanese and English--grows poorer, its traditions no longer able to sustain it. Sarah's hopes for the future have come to rely either on marriage, or finding the mother she can't remember.

Iman Humaydan Younes is a Lebanese novelist, short-story writer, and freelance journalist. Wild Mulberries is her second novel, after B as in Beirut, both of which received wide international acclaim and were also published in French and German.

Translated by Michelle Hartman.